
phTEsStt??) hy 



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THE RECREATIONS OF A 
COUNTRY PARSON. 

FIRST SERIES. 



LONDON 

PRINTED BY Sl'OTTISWOODE AND CO. 

NEW-STKEET S(JUAKE 



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Gin 

Mrs.Hervnen Jennings 
April 26. l©33 



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CONTEXTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
Ctmceming the Ctnatiry Parsotis Life 

CHAPTER II. 

Concerning the Art of Putting Thittgi: being Tiutugiuson Represen- 
iatitm and ilirrtpresentation 



CHAPTER III. 

Concerning TsM) Blisters of Hstmaniiy : heing Thoughii on Petty 

Malignity and Petty Trickery 79 



CHAPTER IV. 
Concerning Work and Play .... 



CHAPTER V. 
Concerning Country Houses and Country Life 171 



VI 



Contents. 



CHAPTER VI. 

FACE 

Concertiing Tidiness : beitig Thoughts vpott an Overlooked Source of 

Humatt Content .......... 223 



CHAPTER r//. 

How I Mused in the Raihuay Train : being Thoughts on Rising by 

Candle-light ; on Nervo^is Fears : and on Vapouring . . ifi-j 



CHAPTER VIII. 
Concerning tlie Moral Influences of the Dwelling 



308 



CHAPTER IX. 
Concerning Hurry and Leisure 



Conclusion 414 




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



The Churchyard Gati 

!\Ia>isc Door . 

I illagcrs coming into Church 

R ivcr and Bridge . 

The A rt of Putting Things 

Manse from Churchyard Gate 

Putting the Stone . 

Baalhec . 

Egyptian W'oinau . 

At her Spinning- Wheel. 

Evening. 

Routing Brig . 

A Ipine Snow . 

•Shooting the Gun 

Ghent 

A rundel . 

Dumfries 



i6 
26 

51 
58 
78 

79 

108 
116 
118 
131 
151 
16S 



viii L ist of Illustrations. 

PAGE 

Carnarvon Castle. ......■••■ 204 

IVyndow's Cot 217 

May-Day 222 

Eagle's Nest .......••••• 223 

Heather ' 232 

Bothie 249 

Hay-inakhig . . , 266 

Kirk aiid Manse 267 

The ' Victory ' 297 

I Rest in Hope 3°? 

Barshatn ......■■■■■■ 3°° 

Abbotsford 329 

Sketchhig ............ 343 

Primroses 356 

Churchyard .......•■■■• 357 

Ferry 369 

Manse frojti the Hill behind 3^5 

Miss Limejuice 39^ 

Monk Missaling 4" 

Twilight 413 

Old Boats 414 




THE CHURCHYARD GATE. 



CHAPTER I. 

CONCERNING THE COUNTRY PARSON'S LIFE. 

THIS is Monday morning. It is a beautiful sun- 
shiny morning early in July. I am sitting on 
the steps that lead to my door, somewhat tired by the 
duty of yesterday, but feeling very restful and thankful. 

B 



TJic Cojtntry Parsoiis Life. 



Before me there is a little expanse of the brightest 
grass, too little to be called a lawn, very soft and 
mossy, and very carefully mown. It is shaded by 
three noble beeches, about two hundred years old. 
The sunshine around has a green tinge from the reflec- 
tion of the leaves. Double hedges, thick and tall, the 
inner one of gleaming beech, shut out all sight of a 
country lane that runs hard by : a lane into which this 
gravelled sweep of would-be avenue enters, after Avind- 
ing deftly through evergreens, rich and old, so as to 
make the utmost of its little length. On the side 
furthest from the lane, the miniature lawn opens into 
a garden of no great extent, and beyond the garden 
you see a green field sloping upwards to a wood which 
bounds the view. One-half of the front of the house 
is covered to the roof by a climbing rose-tree, so rich 
now with cluster roses that you see only the white soft 
masses of fragrance. Crimson roses and fuchsias cover 
half-way up the remainder of the front wall ; and the 
sides of the flight of steps are green with large-leaved 
ivy. If ever there was a dwelling embosomed in great 
trees and evergreens, it is here. Everything grows 
beautifully : oaks, horse-chestnuts, beeches ; laurels, 
yews, hollies ; lilacs and hawthorn trees. Off a little 
way on the right, graceful in stem, in branches, in the 
pale bark, in the light-green leaves, I see my especial 
pet, a fair acacia. This is the true country ; not the 



TJic Country Parson's Life. 



poor shadow of it which you have near great and 
smoky towns. That sapphire air is polluted by no 
factoiy chimney. Smoke is a beauty here, there is so 
little of it : rising thin and blue from the cottage ; hos- 
pitable and friendly-looking from the rare mansion. 
The town is five miles distant : there is not even a 
village near. Green fields are all about ; hawthorn 
hedges and rich hedge-rows ; great masses of wood 
everywhere. But this is Scotland : and there is no lack 
of hills and rocks, of little streams and waterfalls ; and 
two hundred yards off, winding round that churchyard 
whose white stones you see by glimpses through old 
oak branches, a large river glides swiftly by. 

It is a quiet and beautiful scene ; and it pleases me 
to think that Britain has thousands and thousands like 
it. But of course none, in my mind, equal this : for 
this has been my home for five years. 

I have been sitting here for an hour, with a book 
on my knee ; and upon that a piece of paper, whereon 
I have been noting down some thoughts for the ser- 
mon which I hope to write during this week, and to 
preach next Sunday in that little parish church of 
which you can see a comer of a gable through the 
oaks which surround the churchyard. I have not 
been able to think very connectedly, indeed : for two 
little feet have been pattering round me, two little 
hands pulling at me occasionally, and a little voice 




MANSE DOOR. 



entreating that I should come and have a race upon 
the green. Of course I went : for hke most men who 
are not very great or very bad, I have learned, for 
the sake of the little owner of the hands and the voice, 
to love every little child. Several times, too, I have 
been obliged to get up and make a dash at a veiy 
small weed which I discerned just appearing through 
the gravel ; and once or twice my man-servant has 
come to consult me about matters connected with 
the garden and the stable. My sermon will be the 
better for all these interruptions. I do not mean to 
say that it will be absolutely good, though it will be 
as good as I can make it : but it will be better for the 



TJic Country Parson's Life. 5 

races with my little girl, and for the thoughts about 
my horse, than it would have been if I had not been 
interrupted at all. The Roman Catholic Church 
meant it well : but it was far mistaken when it thought 
to make a man a better parish priest by cutting him 
off from domestic ties, and quite emancipating him 
from all the little worries of domestic life. That might 
be the way to get men who would preach an unprac- 
tical religion, not human in interest, not able to com- 
fort, direct, sustain through daily cares, temptations, 
and sorrows. But for preaching which will come 
home to men's business and bosoms, which will not 
appear to ignore those things which must of neces- 
sity occupy the greatest part of an ordinary mortal's 
thoughts, commend me to the preacher who has 
learned by experience what are human ties, and what 
is human worry. 

It is a characteristic of country life, that living in 
the country you have so many cares outside. In 
town, you have nothing to think of (I mean in the 
way of little material matters) beyond the walls of 
your dwelling. It is not your business to see to the 
paving of the street before your door ; and if you live 
in a square, you are not individually responsible for 
the tidiness of the shrubbery in its centre. Wlien you 
come home, after the absence of a week or a month, 
you have nothing to look round upon and see that it 



TJie Country Parsons Life. 



is right. The space within the house's walls is not a 
man's proper province. Your library-table and your 
books are all the domain which comes within the 
scope of your orderly spirit. But if you live in the 
country, in a house of your own with even a few acres 
of land attached to it, you have a host of things to 
think of when you come home from your week's or 
month's absence ; you have an endless number of 
little things worrying you to take a turn round and 
see that they are all as they should be. You can 
hardly sit down and rest for their tugging at you. 
Is the grass all trimly mown % Has the pruning been 
done that you ordered? Has that rose-tree been 
trained % Has that bit of fence been mended % Are 
all the walks perfectly free from weeds % Is there not 
a gap left in box-wood edgings'? and are the edges 
of all walks through grass sharp and clearly defined % 
Has that nettly corner of a field been made tidy? 
Has any one been stealing the fruit? Have the 
neighbouring cows been in your clover ? How about 
the stable? — any fractures of the harness? — any 
scratches on the carriage ? — anything amiss with the 
horse or horses ? All these, and innumerable ques- 
tions more, press on the man who looks after matters 
for himself, when he arrives at home. 

Still, there is good in all this. That which in a 
desponding mood you call a worry, in a cheerful mood 



TJic Country Parsoiis Life. 



you think a source of simple, healthful interest in life. 
And there is one case in particular, in which I doubt 
not tlie reader of simple and natural tastes (and such 
may all my readers be) has experienced, if he be a 
country parson not too rich or great, the benefit of 
these gentle counter-irritants. It is when you come 
home, leaving your wife and children for a little while 
behind you. It is autumn : you are having your 
holiday : you have all gone to the sea-side. You 
have been away two or three weeks ; and you begin 
to think that you ought to let your parishioners see 
that you have not forgotten them. You resolve to go 
home for ten days, which shall include two Sundays 
with their duty. You have to travel a hundred and 
thirty miles. So on a Friday morning you bid your 
little circle good-bye, and set off alone. It is not, per- 
haps, an extreme assumption that you are a man of 
sound sense and feeling, and not a selfish conceited 
humbug : and, the case being so, you are not ashamed 
to confess that you are somewhat saddened by even 
that short parting ; and that various thoughts obtrude 
themselves of possible accident and sorrow before you 
meet again. It is only ten days, indeed : but a wise 
man is recorded to have once advised his fellow-men 
in words which run as follows, ' Boast not thyself of 
to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring 
forth.' And as you sail along in the steamer, and 



TJic Country Parson s Life. 



sweep along in the train, you are thinking of the 
Httle things that not without tears bade their governor 
farewell. It was early morning when you left : and 
as you proceed on your solitary journey, the sun 
ascends to noon, and declines towards evening. You 
have read your newspaper : there is no one else in 
that compartment of the carriage : and hour after 
hour you grow more and more dull and down-hearted. 
At length, as the sunset is gilding the swept harvest- 
fields, you reach the quiet little railway station among 
the hills. It is wonderful to see it. There is no 
village : hardly a dwelling in sight : there are rocky 
hills all round ; great trees ; and a fine river, by fol- 
lowing which the astute engineer led his railway to 
this seemingly inaccessible spot. You alight on that 
primitive platform, with several large trees growing 
out of it, and with a waterfall at one end of it : and 
beyond the little palisade, you see your trap, (let me 
not say carriage,) your man-servant, your horse, per- 
haps your pair. How kindly and pleasant the ex- 
pression even of the horse's back ! How unlike the 
bustle of a railway station in a large town ! The 
train goes, the brass of the engine red in the sunset ; 
and you are left in perfect stillness. Your baggage is 
stowed, and you drive away gently. It takes some 
piloting to get down the steep slope from this out-of- 
the-way place. What a change from the thunder of 



TJic Country Parsons Life. 



the train to this audible quiet ! You interrogate your 
servant first in the comprehensive question, if all is 
right. Relieved by his general affirmative answer, 
you descend into particulars. Any one sick in the 
parish % how was the church attended on the Sundays 
you were away? how is Jenny, who had the fever; 
and John, who had the paralytic stroke % How are 
the servants % how is the horse \ the cow ; the pig ; 
the dog ? How is the garden progressing ? how about 
fruit ] how about flowers % There was an awful thun- 
derstorm on Wednesday : the people thought it was 
the end of the world. Two bullocks were killed : 
and thirteen sheep. Widow Wiggins' son had de- 
serted from the army, and had come home. The 
harvest-home at such a farm is to-night : may Thomas 
go % What a little quiet world is the country parish : 
what a microcosm even the country parsonage ! You 
are interested and pleased : you are getting over your 
stupid feeling of depression. You are interested in 
all these little matters, not because you have grown a 
gossiping, little-minded man, but because you know 
it is fit and right and good for you to be interested in 
such things. You have five or six miles to drive : 
never less : the scene grows always more homely and 
familiar as you draw nearer home. And arrived at 
last, what a deal to look at ! What a welcome on 
the servants' faces : such a contrast to the indifferent 



lO TJie Country Parson's Life. 



looks of servants in a town. You hasten to your 
library-table to see what letters await you : country- 
folk are always a little nervous about their letters, as 
half expecting, half fearing, half hoping, some vague, 
great, undefined event. You see the snug fire : the 
chamber so precisely arranged, and so fresh-looking : 
you remark it and value it fifty times more amid 
country fields and trees than you would turning out 
of tlie manifest life and civilisation of the city street. 
You are growing cheerful and thankful now ; but 
before it grows dark, you must look round out of 
doors : and that makes you entirely thankful and 
cheerful. Surely the place has grown greener and 
prettier since you saw it last ! You walk about the 
garden and the shrubbery : the gravel is right, the 
grass is right, the trees are right, the hedges are right, 
everything is right. You go to the stable-yard : you 
pat your horse, and pull his ears, and enjoy seeing his 
snug resting-place for the night. You peep into the 
cow-house, now growing very dark : you glance into 
the abode of the pig : the dog has been capering 
about you all this while. You are not too great a 
man to take pleasure in these little things. And now 
when you enter your library again, where your soli- 
tary meal is spread, you sit down in the mellow 
lamp-light, and feel quite happy. How different it 
would have been to have walked out of a street-cab 



The Country Parson's Life. 1 1 



into a town-house, with nothing beyond its walls to 
think of ! 

This is so sunshiny a day, and everything is 
looking so cheerful and beautiful, that I know my 
present testimony to the happiness of the country 
parson's life must be received with considerable reser- 
vation. Just at the present hour, I am willing to de- 
clare that I think the life of a country clergyman, in 
a pretty parish, with a well-conducted and well-to-do 
population, and with a fair living, is as happy, useful, 
and honourable as the life of man can be. Your 
work is all of a pleasant kind ; you have, generally 
speaking, not too much of it ; the fault is your own 
if you do not meet much esteem and regard among 
your parishioners of all degrees ; you feel you are of 
some service in your generation : you have intellectual 
labours and tastes which keep your mind from growing 
rusty, and which admit you into a wide field of pure 
enjoyment : you have pleasant country cares to divert 
your mind from head-work, and to keep you for 
hours daily in the open air, in a state of pleasurable 
interest ; your little children grow up with green 
fields about them, and pure air to breathe : and if 
your heart be in your sacred work, you feel, Sunday 
by Sunday, and day by day, a solid enjoyment in 
telling your fellow-creatures the Good News you are 



12 TJie Country Parson s Life. 

commissioned to address to them, which it is hard 
to describe to another, but which you humbly and 
thankfully take and keep. You have not, indeed, the 
excitement and the exhilaration of commanding the 
attention of a large educated congregation : those are 
reserved for the popular clergyman of a city parish. 
But then, you are free from the temptation to attempt 
the unworthy arts of the clap-trap mob-orator, or to 
preach mainly to display your own talents and 
eloquence ; you have striven to exclude all personal 
ambition ; and, forgetting yourself or what people 
may think of yourself, to preach simply for the good 
of your fellow-sinners, and for the glory of that kind 
Master whom you serve. And around you there are 
none of those heart-breaking things which must crush 
the earnest clergyman in a large town: no destitution; 
poverty, indeed, but no starvation : and although evil 
will be wherever man is, nothing of the gross, daring, 
shocking vice which is matured in the dens of the 
great city. The cottage children breathe a confined 
atmosphere while within the cottage ; but they have 
only to go to the door, and the pure air of heaven is 
about them, and they live in it most of their waking 
hours. Very different with the pale children of a like 
class in the city, who do but exchange the infected 
chamber for the filthy lane, and whose eyes are hardly 
ever gladdened by the sight of a green field. And 



The Country Parson's Life. 13 

when the diligent country parson walks or drives about 
his parish, not without a decided feeling of authority 
and ownership, he knows every man, woman, and 
child he meets, and all their concerns and cares. 
Still, even on this charming morning, I do not forget 
that it depends a good deal upon the parson's present 
mood, what sort of account he may give of his 
country parish and his parochial life. If he have 
been recently cheated by a well-to-do farmer in the 
price of some farm produce ; if he have seen a 
humble neighbour deliberately forcing his cow through 
a weak part of the hedge into a rich pasture-field of 
the glebe, and then have found him ready to swear 
that the cow trespassed entirely without his know- 
ledge or will ; if he meet a hulking fellow carrying 
in the twilight various rails from a fence to be used 
as firewood ; if, on a warm summer day, the whole 
congregation falls fast asleep during the sermon ; if 
a farmer tells him what a bad and dishonest man a 
discharged man-servant was, some weeks after the 
parson had found that out for himself and packed off 
the dishonest man ; if certain of the cottagers near 
appear disposed to live entirely, instead of only par- 
tially, of the parsonage larder ; the poor parson may 
sometimes be found ready to wish himself in town, 
compact within a house in a street with no back- 
door ; and not spreading out such a surface as in 



14 The Country Par soil's Life. 



the country he must, for petty fraud and peculation. 
But, after all, the country parson's great worldly cross 
lies for the most part in his poverty, and in the cares 
which arise out of that. It is not always so, indeed. 
In the lot of some the happy medium has been 
reached ; they have found the ' neither poverty nor 
riches' of the wise man's prayer. Would that it 
were so with all ! For how it must cripple a clergy- 
man's usefulness, how abate his energies, how destroy 
his eloquence, how sicken his heart, how narrow and 
degrade his mind, how tempt (as it has sometimes 
done) to unfair and dishonest shifts and expedients, 
to go about not knowing how to make the ends meet, 
not seeing how to pay what he owes ! If I were a 
rich man, how it would gladden me to send a fifty- 
pound note to certain houses I have seen ! What a 
dead weight it would lift from the poor wife's heart ! 
Ah ! I can think of the country parson, like poor 
Sydney Smith, adding his accounts, calculating his 
little means, wondering where he can pinch or pare 
any closer, till the poor fellow bends down his stupi- 
fied head and throbbing temples on his hands, and 
wishes he could creep into a quiet grave. God 
tempers the wind to the shorn lamb ; or I should 
wonder how it does not drive some country parsons 
mad, to think what would become of their children 
if they were taken away. It is the warm nest upon 



TJic Country Parsoiis Life. 15 

the rotten bough. They need abundant faith ; let us 
trust they get it. But in a desponding mood, I can 
well imagine such a one resolving that no child of 
his shall ever enter upon a course in life which has 
brought himself such misery as he has known. 

I have been writing down some thoughts, as I have 
said, for the sermon of next Sunday. To-morrow 
morning I shall begin to write it fully out. Some 
individuals, I am aware, have maintained that listen- 
ing to a sermon is irksome work ; but to a man whose 
tastes lie in that way, the writing of sermons is most 
pleasant occupation. It does you good. Unless you 
are a mere false pretender, you cannot try to impress 
any truth forcibly upon the hearts of others, without 
impressing it forcibly upon your own. All that you 
will ever make other men feel, will be only a subdued 
reflection of what you yourself have felt. And sermon- 
writing is a task that is divided into many stages. 
You begin afresh every week : you come to an end 
every week. If you are writing a book, the end 
appears very far away. If you find that although 
you do your best, you yet treat some part of your 
subject badly, you know that the bad passage remains 
as a permanent blot : and you work on under the 
cross-influence of that recollection. But if, with all 
your pains, this week's sermon is poor, why, you hope 
to do better next week. You seek a fresh field : you 




VILLAGERS COMING INTO CHURCH. 



try again. No doubt, in preaching your sermons you 
are somewhat annoyed by rustic boorishness and want 
of thought. Various bumpkins will forget to close the 
door behind them when they enter church too late, as 
they not unfrequently do. Various men with great 
hob-nailed shoes, entering late, instead of quietly slip- 
ping into a pew close to the door, will stamp noisily 
up the passage to the further extremity of the church. 
Various faces will look up at you week by week, 
hopelessly blank of all interest or intelligence. Some 



The Country Parson's Life. 17 

human beings will not merely sleep, but loudly evince 
that they are sleeping. Well, you gradually cease to 
be worried by these little things. At first, tliey jarred 
through every nerve ; but you grow accustomed to 
them. And if you be a man of principle and of sense, 
you know better than to fancy that amid a rustic 
people your powers are thrown away. Even if you 
have in past days been able to interest congregations 
of the refined and cultivated class, you will now show 
your talent and your principle at once by accom- 
modating your instructions to the comprehension of 
the simple souls committed to your care. I confess I 
have no patience with men who profess to preach 
sermons carelessly prepared, because they have an 
uneducated congregation. Nowhere is more careful 
preparation needed ; but of course it must be pre- 
paration of the right sort. Let it be received as an 
axiom, that the very first aim of the preacher should 
be to interest. He must interest, before he can hope 
to instruct or improve. And no matter how filled 
with orthodox doctrine and good advice a sermon 
may be, if it put the congregation to sleep, it is an 
abominably bad sermon. 

Surely, I go on to think, this kind of life must 

affect all the productions of the mind of the man who 

leads it. There must be a smack of the country, its 

scenes and its cares, about them all. You walk in 

c 



1 8 TJic Country Parsons Life. 

shady lanes : you stand and look at the rugged bark 
of old trees : you help to prune evergreens : you 
devise flower-gardens and winding walks. You talk 
to pigs^ and smooth down the legs of horses. You sit 
on mossy walls, and saunter by the river side, and 
through woodland paths. You grow familiar with 
the internal arrangements of poor men's dwellings: 
you see much of men and women in those solemn 
seasons when all pretences are laid aside ; and they 
speak with confidence to you of their little cares 
and fears, for this world and the other. You kneel 
down and pray by the bedside of many sick ; and you 
know the look of the dying face well. Young children, 
whom you have humbly sought to instruct in the best 
of knowledge, have passed away from this life in your 
presence, telling you in interrupted sentences whither 
they trusted they were going, and bidding you not 
forget to meet them there. You feel the touch of the 
weak fingers still ; the parting request is not forgotten. 
You mark the spring blossoms come back ; and you 
walk among the harvest sheaves in the autumn even- 
ing. And when you ride up the parish on your duty, 
you feel the influence of bare and lonely tracts, where, 
ten miles from home, you sometimes dismount from 
your horse^ and sit down on a grey stone by the way- 
side, and look for an hour at the heather at your feet, 
and at the sweeps of purple moorland far away. You 



TJic Country Parsoiis Life. 19 

go down to the churchyard frequently : you sit on the 
gravestone of your predecessor who died two hundred 
years since ; and you count five, six, seven spots where 
those who served the cure before you sleep. Then, 
leaning your head upon your hand, you look thirty 
years into the future, and wonder whether you are to 
grow old. You read, through moss-covered letters, 
how a former incumbent of the parish died in the last 
century, aged twenty-eight. That afternoon, coming 
from a cottage where you had been seeing a frail old 
woman, you took a flying leap over a brook near, with 
precipitous sides ; and you thought that some day, if 
you lived, you would have to creep quietly round by 
a smoother -way. And now you think you see an aged 
man, tottering and grey, feebly walking down to the 
churchyard as of old, and seating himself hard by 
where you sit. The garden will have grown weedy 
and untidy : it will not be the trim, precise dwelling 
which youthful energy and hopefulness keep it now. 

Let it be hoped that the old man's hat is not seedy, 
nor his coat threadbare : it makes one's heart sore to 
see that. And let it be hoped that he is not alone. 
But you go home, I think, with a quieter and kindlier 
heart. 

You live in a region, mental and material, that is 
very entirely out of the track of worldly ambition. 
You do not blame it in others : you have learnt to 



20 TJic Co?nitry Parson's Life. 

blame few things in others severely, except cruelty 
and falsehood : but you have outgrown it for yourself. 
You hear, now and then, of this and the other school 
or college friend becoming a great man. One is an 
Indian hero : one is attorney -general : one is a cabinet 
minister. You like to see their names in the news- 
papers. You remember how in college competitions 
with them, you did not come off second-best. You 
are struck at finding that such a man, whom you 
recollect as a fearful dunce, is getting respectably on 
through life : you remember how at school you used 
to wonder whether the difference between the clever 
boy and the booby would be in after days the same 
great gulf that it was then. Your life goes on very 
regularly, each week much like the last. And, on the 
whole, it is very happy. You saunter for a little in 
the open air after breakfast : you do so when the 
evergreens are beautiful with snow as well as when 
the warm sunshine makes the grass white with widely- 
opened daisies. Your children go with you wdierever 
you go. You are growing subdued and sobered ; but 
they are not : and when one sits on your knee, and 
lays upon your shoulder a little head with golden 
ringlets, you do not mind very much though your own 
hair (what is left of it) is getting shot with gray. You 
sit down in your quiet study to your work : what 
thousands of pages you have written at that table ! 



TJic Country Parsoiis L ife. 2 1 

You cease your task at one o'clock : you read your 
Tunes: you get on horseback and canter up the 
parish to see your sick : or you take the ribbons and 
tool into the county town. You feel the stir of even 
its quiet existence : you drop into the bookseller's : 
you grumble at the venerable age of the Reviews that 
come to you from the club. Generally, you cannot be 
bothered with calls upon your tattling acquaintances : 
you leave these to your wife. You drive home again, 
through the shady lanes, away into the green country : 
your man-servant in his sober livery tells you with 
pride, when you go to the stable-yard for a few 
minutes before dinner, that Mr. Snooks, the great 
judge of horse-flesh, had declared that afternoon in 
the inn stable in town, that he had not seen a better- 
kept carriage and harness anywhere, and that your 
plump steed was a noble creature. It is well when a 
servant is proud of his belongings : he will be a happier 
man, and a more faithful and useful. When you next 
drive out, you will see the silver blazing in the sun 
with increased brightness. And now you have the 
pleasant evening before you. Do not, like some 
slovenly men in remote places, sit down to dinner 
an unwashed and untidy object : living so quietly as 
you do, it is especially needful, if you would avoid an 
encroaching rudeness, to pay careful attention to the 
little refinements of life. And the great event of the day 



22 The Coimtry Parson s Life. 

over, you have music, books, and children ; you have 
the summer saunter in the twihght ; you have the winter 
evening fireside ; you take perhaps another turn at your 
sermon for an hour or two. The day has brought its 
work and its recreation ; you can look back each even- 
ing upon something done ; save when you give yourself 
a holiday which you feel has been fairly toiled for. 
And what a wonderful amount of work, such as it is, 
you may, by exertion regular but not excessive, turn 
off in the course of the ten months and a-half of the 
working year ! 

And thus, day by day, and month by month, the 
life of the country parson passes quietly away. It 
will be briefly comprehended on his tombstone, in 
the assurance that he did his duty, simply and faith- 
fully, through so many years. It is somewhat mono ■ 
tonous, but he is too busy to weary of it : it is varied 
by not much society, in the sense of conversation 
with educated men with whom the clergyman has 
many common feelings. But it is inexpressibly pleas- 
ing when, either to his own house or to a dwelling 
near, there comes a visitor with whom an entire sym- 
pathy is felt, though probably holding very antagon- 
istic views : then come the ' good talks ' with delighted 
Johnson ; genial evenings, and long walks of after- 
noons. The daily post is a daily strong sensation, 
sometimes pleasing, sometimes painful, as he brings 



The Co2intry Parsotis Life. 23 



tidings of the outer world. You have your daily 
Times ; each Monday morning brings your Saturday 
jRa'iew ; and the Illustrated London Nezvs comes 
not merely for the children's sake. You read all the 
quarterlies, of course ; you skim the monthlies ; but 
it is with tenfold interest and pleasure that month by 
month you receive that magazine which is edited by 
a dear friend who sends it to you, and in which some- 
times certain pages have the familiar look of a friend's 
face. You draw it wet from its big envelope : you 
cut its leaves Avith care : you enjoy the fragrance of 
its steam as it dries at the study fire : you glance at 
the shining backs of that long row of volumes into 
Avhich the pleasant monthly visitants have accumu- 
lated : you think you will have another volume soon. 
Then there is a great delight in occasionally receiving 
a large bundle of books which have been ordered 
from your bookseller in the city a hundred miles off : 
in reading the address in such big letters that they 
must have been made with a brush : in stripping off 
the successive layers of immensely thick brown paper: 
in reaching the precious hoard within, all such fresh 
copies (who are they that buy the copies you turn 
over in the shop, but wliich you would not on any 
account take X) : such fresh copies, with their bran- 
new bindings and their leaves so pure in a material 
sense : in cuttina: the leaves at the rate of two or 



24 The Country Parson's Life. 

three volumes an evening, and in seeing the entire 
accession of Hterature lying about the other table (not 
the one you write on) for a few days ere they are 
given to the shelves. You are not in the least 
ashamed to confess that you are pleased by all these 
little things. You regard it as not necessarily proving 
any special pettiness of mind or heart. You regard it 
as no proof of greatness in any man, that he should ap- 
pear to care nothing for anything. Your private belief 
is that it shows him to be either a humbug or a fool. 

In this little volume, the indulgent reader will find 
certain of those Essays which the writer discovered on 
cutting the leaves of the magazine which comes to 
him on the last day of every month. They were 
written as something which might afford variety of 
work, which often proves the most restful of all recrea- 
tion. They are nothing more than that which they 
are called — a country clergyman's Recreations. My 
solid work, and my first thoughts, are given to that 
which is the business and the happiness of my life. 
But these Essays have led me into a field which to 
myself was fresh and pleasant. And I have always 
returned from them, with increased interest, to graver 
themes and trains of thought. I have not forgot, as I 
wrote them, a certain time, when my little children 
must go away from their early home ; when these 
evergreens I have planted and these walks I have 



The Country Parsons Life. 



25 



made shall pass to my successor (may he be a better 
man !) ; and when I shall perhaps find my resting-place 
under those ancient oaks. Nor have I wholly failed 
to remember a coming day, when bishops and arch- 
bishops shall be called to render an account of the 
fashion in which they exercised their solemn and dig- 
nified trusts ; and when I, who am no more than the 
minister of a Scotch country parish, must answer for 
the diligence with which I served my little cure. 





RIVER AND BRIDGE. 



CHAPTER 11. 

CONCERNING THE ART OF PUTTING THINGS : 

BEING THOUGHTS ON REPRESENTATION AND 
MISREPRESENTATION. 

LET the reader be assured that the word Rcprcscn- 
-/ tatioii, which has caught his eye on glancing 
at the title of this essay, has nothing earthly to do 



The Art of Putting Things. 27 

with the Elective Franchise, whether in boroughs or 
counties. Not a syllable will be found upon the 
following pages bearing directly or indirectly upon 
any New Refomi Bill. I do not care a rush who is 
member for this county. I have no doubt that all 
members of Parliament are very much alike. Every- 
body knows that each individual legislator who pushes 
his way into the House is actuated solely by a pure 
patriotic love for his country. No briefless barrister 
ever got into Parliament in the hope of getting a 
place of twelve hundred a-year. No barrister in fair 
practice ever did so in the hope of getting a silk 
gown, or the Solicitor-Generalship, or a seat on the 
bench. No merchant or country-gentleman ever did 
so in the hope of gaining a little accession of dignity 
and influence in the town or county in which he lives. 
All these things are universally understood ; and they 
are mentioned here merely to enable it to be said, 
that this treatise has nothing to do with them. 

Edgar Allan Poe, the miserable genius who died in 
America a few years ago, declared that he never had 
the least difiiculty in tracing the logical steps by 
which he chose any subject on which he had ever 
written, and matured his plan for treating it. And 
some readers may remember a curious essay, con- 
tained in his collected works, in which he gives a 
minute account of the genesis of his extraordinary 



28 TJlc Art of Putting Tilings. 

poem, The Raven. But Poe was a humbug ; and it 
is impossible to place the least faith in anything said 
by him upon any subject whatever. In his writings 
we find him repeatedly avowing that he would assert 
any falsehood, provided it were likely to excite inter- 
est and 'create a sensation.' I believe that most 
authors could tell us that very frequently the concep- 
tion and the treatment of their subject have darted 
on them all at once, they could not tell how. Many 
clergymen know how strangely texts and topics of 
discourse have been suggested to them, while it was 
impossible to trace any link of association with what 
had occupied their minds the instant before. The 
late Douglas Jerrold relates how he first conceived the 
idea of one of his most popular productions. Walk- 
ing on a winter day, he passed a large enclosure full 
of romping boys at play. He paused for a minute ; 
and as he looked and mused, a thought flashed upon 
him. It was not so beautiful, and you would say 
not so natural, as the reflections of Gray, as he looked 
from a distance at Eton College. As Jerrold gazed 
at the schoolboys, and listened to their merry shouts, 
there burst upon him the conception of Mrs. Caudle's 
Curtain Lectures! There seems httle enough con- 
nexion with what he was looking at ; and although 
Jerrold declared that the sight suggested the idea, he 
could not pretend to trace the link of association. It 



TJic Art of Pjittmg Tilings. 29 

would be very interesting if we could accurately know 
the process by which authors, small or great, piece 
together their grander characters. How did Milton 
pile up his Satan % how did Shakspeare put together 
Hamlet or Lady Macbeth ? how did Charlotte Bronte 
imagine Rochester? Writers generally keep their 
secrets, and do not let us see behind the scenes. We 
can trace, indeed, in successive pieces by Sheridan, the 
step-by-step development of his most brilliant jests, 
and of his most gushing bursts of the feeling of the 
moment. No doubt Lord Brougham had tried the 
woolsack to see how it would do, before he fell on his 
knees upon it (on the impulse of the instant) at the 
end of his great speech on the Reform Bill. But of 
course Lord Brougham would not tell us ; and Sheridan 
did not intend us to know. Even Mr. Dickens, when, 
in his preface to the cheap edition of Pickwick, he 
avows his purpose of telling us all about the origin of 
that amazingly successful serial, gives us no inkling of 
the process by which he produced the character which 
we all know so well. He tells us a great deal about 
the mere details of the work : the pages of letter-press, 
the number of illustrations, the price and times of 
publication. But the process of actual authorship re- 
mains a mystery. The great painters would not tell 
where they got their colours. The effort which gives 
a new character to the acquaintance of hundreds of 



30 The Art of Putting Things. 

thousands of Englishmen, shall be concealed beneath 
a decorous vale. All that Mr. Dickens tells us is this : 
' I thought of Mr. Pickwick, and wrote the first num- 
ber.' And to the natural question of curiosity, ' How 
on earth did you think of Mr. Pickwick?' the author's 
silence replies, ' I don't choose to tell you that l' 

And now, courteous reader, you are humbly asked 
to suffer the Avriter's discursive fashion, as he records 
how the idea of the present discourse, treatise, disser- 
tation, or essay flashed upon his mind. Yesterday was 
a most beautiful frosty day. The air was indescribably 
exhilarating : the cold was no more than bracing • and 
as I fared forth for a walk of some miles, I saw the 
tower of the ancient church, green with centuries of 
ivy, looking through the trees which surround it, the 
green ivy silvered over with hoar-frost. The hedges 
on either hand, powdered with rime, were shining in 
the cold sunshine of the winter afternoon. First, I 
passed through a thick pine-wood, bordering the road 
on both sides. The stems of the fir-trees had that 
warm rich colour which is always pleasant to look at ; 
and the green branches were just touched with frost. 
One undervalues the evergreens in summer : their 
colour is dull when compared with the fresher and 
brighter green of the deciduous trees ; but now, when 
these gay transients have changed to shivering skele- 
tons, the hearty firs, hollies, and yews warm and cheer 



TJic A rt of Putting Tilings. 



the wintry landscape. Not the wintry, I should say, 
but the winter landscape, which conveys quite a differ- 
ent impression. The word wintry wakens associations 
of bleakness, bareness, and bitterness ; a hearty ever- 
green tree never looks wintry, nor does a landscape 
to which such trees give the tone. Then emerging 
from the wood, I was in an open country. A great 
hill rises just ahead, which the road will skirt by and 
by : on the right, at the foot of a little cliff hard by, 
runs a shallow, broad, rapid river. Looking across 
the river, I see a large range of nearly level park, 
which at a mile's distance rises into upland ; the park 
shews broad green glades, broken and bounded by 
fine trees, in clumps and in avenues. In summer- 
time you would see only the green leaves : but now, 
peering through the branches, you can make out the 
outline of the gray turrets of the baronial dwelling 
which has stood there — added to, taken from, patched, 
and altered, but still the same dwelling — for the last 
four hundred years. And on the left, I am just pass- 
ing the rustic gateway through which you approach 
that quaint cottage on the knoll two hundred yards 
off — one story high, with deep thatch, steep gables, 
overhanging eaves, and veranda of rough oak — a 
sweet little place, where Izaak Walton might success- 
fully have carried out the spirit of his favourite text, 
and ' studied to be quiet.' All this way, three miles 



32 TJie Art of Putting Tilings. 

and more, I did not meet a human being. There was 
not a breath of air through the spines of the firs, and 
not a sound except the ripple of the river. I leant 
upon a gate, and looked into a field. Something was 
grazing in the field ; but I cannot remember whether 
it was cows, sheep, oxen, elephants, or camels ; for as 
I was looking, and thinking how I should begin a 
sermon on a certain subject much thought upon for 
the last fortnight, my mind resolutely turned away 
from it, and said, as plainly as mind could express it. 
For several days to come I shall produce material 
upon no subject but one, — and that shall be the com- 
prehensive, practical, suggestive, and most important 
subject of the Art of Putting Things ! 

And, indeed, there is hardly a larger subject, in re- 
lation to the social life of the nineteenth century in 
England ; and there is hardly a practical problem to 
the solution of which so great an amount of ingenuity 
and industry, honest and dishonest, is daily brought, 
as the grand problem of setting forth yourself, your 
goods, your horses, your case, your plans, your thoughts 
and arguments — all your belongings, in short — to the 
best advantage. From the Prime Minister, who exerts 
all his wonderful skill and eloquence to put his policy 
before Parliament and the country in the most favour- 
able light, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who 
does his very best to cast a rosy hue even upon an 



The Art of Putting T Jungs. 33 

income-tax, down to the shopman who arranges his 
draperies in the window against market-day in that 
fashion which he thinks will prove most fascinating to 
the maid-servant with her newly-paid wages in her 
pocket, and the nurse who in a most lively and jovial 
manner assures a young lady of three years old that 
she will never feel the taste of her castor-oil, — yea, 
even to the dentist who with a joke and a smiling 
face approaches you with his forceps in his hand : — 
from the great Attorney-General seeking to place his 
view of his case with convincing force before a bewil- 
dered jury, (that view being flatly opposed to common 
sense,) down to the schoolboy found out in some mis- 
chievous trick and trying to throw the blame upon 
somebody else : almost all civilised beings in Great 
Britain are from morning to night labouring hard to 
put things in general or something in particular in the 
way that they think will lead to the result which best 
suits their views ; — are, in short, practising the art of 
representing or misrepresenting things for their own 
advantage. Great skill, you would say, must result 
from this constant practice : and indeed it probably 
does. But then, people are so much in the habit of 
trying to //// things themselves, that they are uncom- 
monly sharp at seeing through the devices of others. 
' Set a thief to catch a thief,' says the ancient adage : 
and so, set a man who can himself tell a very plausible 

D 



34 The Art of Putting Tilings. 

story without saying anything positively untrue, to dis- 
cover the real truth under the rainbow tints of the 
plausible story told by another. 

But do not fancy, my kind reader, that I have any 
purpose of making a misanthropical onslaught upon 
poor humanity. I am very far from desiring to imply 
that there is anything essentially wrong or dishonest 
in trying to put things in the most favourable light for 
our views and plans. The contrary is the case. It 
is a noble gift, when a man is able to put great truths 
or momentous facts before our minds with that vivid- 
ness and force which shall make us feel these facts 
and truths in their grand reality. A great evil, to 
which human beings are by their make subject, is, that 
they can talk of things, know things, and understand 
things, without yi"^/?)/^ them in their true importance — 
without, in short, realising them. There appears to be 
a certain numbness about the mental organs of per- 
ception ; and the man who is able to put things so 
strikingly, clearly, pithily, forcibly, glaringly, whether 
these things are religious, social, or political truths, as 
to get through that numbness, that crust of insensi- 
bility, to the quick of the mind and heart, must be 
a great man, an earnest man, an honest man, a good 
man. I believe that any great reformer will find less 
practical discouragement in the opposition of bad 
people than in the inertia of good people. You cannot 



TJie A rt of Putting Things. 3 5 

get them to feel that the need and the danger are so 
imminent and urgent ; you cannot get them to bestir 
themselves with the activity and energy which the case 
demands. You cannot get them to take it in that 
the open sewer and the airless home of the working 
man are such a very serious matter ; you cannot get 
them to feel that the vast uneducated masses of the 
British population form a mine beneath our feet which 
may explode any day, with God knows what devas- 
tation. I think that not all the wonderful eloquence, 
freshness, and pith of Mr. Kingsley form a talent so 
valuable as his power of compelling people toy?<?/what 
they had always known and talked about, but never 
felt. And wherein lies that power, but just in his skill 
to put things — in his power of truthful representa- 
tion? 

Sydney Smith was once talking with an Irish Roman 
Catholic priest about the proposal to endow the 
Romish Church in Ireland. ' We would not take the 
Saxon money,' said the worthy priest, quite sincerely ; 
* we would not defile our fingers with it. No matter 
whether Parliament offered us endowments or not, 
we would not receive them.' ' Suppose,' replied 
Sydney Smith, * you were to receive an official lettter 
that on calling at such a bank in the town three miles 
off, you would hereafter receive a hundred pounds 
a-quarter, the first quarter's allowance payable in ad- 



36 The Art of Putting Tilings. 

vance on the next day ; and suppose that you wanted 
money to do good, or to buy books, or anything else, 
do you mean to say you would not drive over to the 
town and take the hundred pounds out of the bank % ' 
The priest was staggered. He had never looked at 
the thing in that precise light. He had never had 
the vague distant question of endowment brought so 
home to him. He had been quite sincere in his 
spirited repudiation of Saxon coin, as recorded above ; 
but he had not exactly understood what he was saying 
and doing. ' Oh, Mr. Smithy he replied, '■ yoti have 
such a way of putting things !'' What a triumph of 
the Anglican's art of truthful representation ! 

One of the latest instances of skill in putting things, 
which I remember to have struck me, I came upon, 
where abundance of such skill may be found — in a 
leading article in the Times. The writer of that 
article was endeavouring to shew that the work of 
the country clergy is extremely light. Of course he 
is sadly mistaken ; but this by the way. As to ser- 
mons, said the lively writer, (I don't pretend to give 
his exact words,) what work is there in a sermon % 
Just fancy that you are writing half-a-dozen letters of 
four pages each, and crossed ! The thing was cleverly 
put ; and it really came on me with the force of a 
fact, a new and surprising fact. Many sermons has 
this thin right hand written \ but my impression of a 



sermon, drawn from some years' experience, is of a 
composition very different from a letter — something 
demanding that brain and heart sliould be worked to 
the top of their bent for more hours than need 
be mentioned here ; something implying as hard and 
as exhausting labour as man can well go through. 
Surely, I thought, I have been working under a sad 
delusion ! Only half-a-dozen light letters of gossip to 
a friend : that is the amount of work implied in a 
sermon ! Have I been all these years making a bug- 
bear of such a simple and easy matter as thatl 
Here is a new and cheerful Avay of putting the thing ! 
But unhappily, though the clever representation 
would no doubt convey to some thousands of readers 
the impression that to write a sermon was a very 
simple affair after all, it broke down, it cnmipled up, 
it went to pieces when brought to the test of fact. 
When next morning I had written my text, I thought 
to myself. Now here I have just to do the same 
amount of work which it would cost me to write half- 
a-dozen letters to half-a-dozen friends, giving them 
our little news. Ah, it would not do ! In a little, I 
was again in the struggle of mapping out my subject, 
and cutting a straight track through the jungle of the 
world of mind; looking about for illustrations, seeking 
words to put my meaning with clearness and interest 
before the simple country-folk I preach to. It was 



38 The Art of Pjitting Tilings. 

not the least like letter-writing. The clever writer's 
way of putting things was wrong ; and though I ac- 
quit him of any crime beyond speaking with autho- 
rity of a thing which he knew nothing about, I must 
declare that his representation was a misrepresenta- 
tion. If you have sufficient skill, you may put what 
is painful so that it shall sound pleasant ; you may 
put a wearisome journey by railway in such a con- 
nexion with cozy cushions, warm rugs, a review or a 
new book, storm sweeping the fields without, and 
warmth and ease within, that it shall seem a delightful 
thing. You may put work, in short, so that it shall 
look like play. But actual experiment breaks down 
the representation. You cannot change the essential 
nature of things. You cannot make black white, 
though a clever man may make it seem so. 

Still, we all have a great love for trying to put any 
hard work or any painful business, which it is certain 
we must go through, in such a light as may make it 
seem less terrible. And it is not difficult to deceive 
ourselves when we are eager to be deceived. No one 
can tell how much comfort poor Damien drew from 
the way in which he put the case on the morning of 
his death by horrible tortures : ' The day will be 
long,' he said, ' but it will have an end.' No one 
can tell what a gleam of light may have darted upon 
the mind of Charles I. as he knelt to the block, when 



TJie A rt of Putting Tilings. 39 

Bishop Juxon put encouragingly the last trial the 
monarch had to go through : ' One last stage, some- 
what turbulent and troublesome, but still a very short 
one^ No one can tell how much it soothed the self- 
love of Tom Purdie, when Sir Walter Scott ordered 
him to cut down some trees which Tom wished to 
stand, and positively commanded that they should go 
down in spite of all Tom's arguments and expostula- 
tions, and all this in the presence of a number of 
gentlemen before whom Tom could not bear any 
impeachment of his woodcraft; no one, I say, can 
tell how much it soothed the worthy forester's self- 
love when after half-an-hour's sulky meditation he 
thought of the happy plan of putting the thing on 
another footing than that of obedience to an order, 
and looking up cheerfully again, said, ' As for those 
trees, I think I '11 taK your advice, Sir Walter !' Would 
it be possible, I wonder, thus pleasantly to put the 
writing of an article so as to do away the sense of the 
exertion which writing an article implies % Have we 
not all little tricks which we play upon ourselves, to 
make our labour seem lighter, our dignity greater, our 
whole position jollier, than in our secret soul we know 
is the fact % Think, then, thou jaded man, bending 
over the written page which is one day to attain the 
dignity of print in Fraser or Blackwood, how in these 
words thou art addressing many thousands of thy 



40 The A rt of Putting Things. 

enlightened countrymen and thy fair countrywomen, 
and becoming known (as Fielding puts it in one of 
his simply felicitous sentences) ' to numbers who 
otherwise never saw or knew thee, and whom thou 
shalt never see or know.' Think how thou shalt lie 
upon massive library-tables, in substantially elegant 
libraries, side by side perhaps with Helps, Kingsley, 
or Hazlitt ; how thou shalt lighten the cares of middle- 
aged men, and (if thou art a writer of fiction) be 
smuggled up to young ladies' chambers ; who shall 
think, as they read thy article (oh, much mistaken !) 
what a nice man thou art ! Alas ! all that way of 
putting things is mere poetry. It won't do. It still 
remains, and always must remain, the stretch and 
strain of mind and muscle, to write. Let not the 
critic be severe on people who write ill : they deserve 
much credit and sympathy because they write at all. 
But though these grand and romantic ways of putting 
the writing of one's article will not serve, there are 
little prosaic material expedients which really avail to 
put it in a light in which it looks decidedly less 
laborious. Slowly let the large ' drawer be pulled out 
wherein lies the paper which will serve, if we are 
allowed to see them, for many months to come. 
There lies the large blue quarto, so thick and sub- 
stantial ; there the massive foolscap, so soft and 
smooth, over which the pen so pleasantly and un- 



TJie A rt of Putting Things. 4 1 

scratchingly glides ; t/iat is the raw material for the 
article. Draw it forth deliberately : fold it accurately : 
then the ivory stridently cuts it through. Weigh the 
paper in your hand ; then put the case thus : ' Well, 
it is only covering these pages with writing, after all ; 
it is just putting three-and-twenty lines, of so many 
words each on the average, upon each of these un- 
blotted surfaces.' Surely there is not so much in 
that. Do not think of all the innumerable processes 
of mind that go to it ; of the weighing of the conse- 
quences of general propositions ; of tlie choice of 
words ; of the pioneering your track right on, not 
turning to either hand ; of the memoiy taxed to bring 
up old thoughts upon your subject; of the clock strik- 
ing unheard while you are bent upon your task, so 
much harder than carrying any reasonable quantity 
of coals, or blacking ever so many boots, or currying 
ever so many horses. Just stick to this view of the 
matter, just put the thing this way — that all you have 
to do is to blacken so many pages, and take the 
comfort of that way of putting it. 

To such people as we human beings are, there is 
hardly any matter of greater practical importance 
than what we have called the Art of Putting Things. 
For, to us, things are what they scan. They affect us 
just according to what we think them. Our know- 
ledge of things, and our feeling in regard to things. 



42 The A rt of Putting Tilings. 

are all contingent on the way in which these things 
have been put before us ; and what different ways 
there are of putting every possible doctrine, or 
opinion, or doing, or thing, or event ! And what 
mischievous results, colouring all our views and feel- 
ings, may follow from an important subject having 
been wrongly, disagreeably, injudiciously put to us 
when we were children ! How many men hate Sun- 
day all their lives because it was put to them so 
gloomily in their boyhood ; and how many English- 
men, on the other hand, fancy a Scotch Sunday the 
most disagreeable of days because the case has been 
wrongly put to them, while in truth there is, in intel- 
ligent religious Scotch families, no more pleasant, 
cheerful, genial, restful, happy day. And did not 
Byron always hate Horace, put to him in youth with 
the associations of impositions and the birch 1 There 
is no more sunshiny inmate of any home than the 
happy-tempered one who has the art of putting all 
things in a pleasant light, from the great misfortunes 
of life down to a broken carriage-spring, a servant's 
failings, a child's salts and senna. You are extremely 
indignant at some person who has used you ill ; you 
are worried and annoyed at his misconduct ; it is as 
though you were going about with a mustard blister 
applied to your mind : when a word or two from some 
genial friend puts the entire matter in a new light. 



TJic A rt of Putting Things. 43 

and your irritation goes, the blister is removed, your 
anger dies out, you would like to pat the offending 
being on the head, and say you bear him no malice. 
And it is wonderful what a little thing sometimes 
suffices to put a case thus differently. When you are 
complaining of somebody's ill-usage, it will change 
your feeling and the look of things, if the friend you 
are speaking to does no more than say of the peccant 
brother, 'Ah ! poor fellow !' I think that every man 
or woman who has got servants, and who has pretty 
frequently to observe (I mean to see, not to speak of) 
some fault on their part, owes a deep debt of grati- 
tude to the man, whoever he was, who thus kindly 
and wisely gave us a forbearing stand-point from 
which to regard a servant's failings, by putting the 
thing in this way, true in itself though new to many, 
that you cannot expect perfection for fourteen, or even 
for fifty pounds a-year. Has not that way of putting 
things sometimes checked you when you meditated 
a sharp reproof, and allayed anger which otherwise 
would have been pretty hot % Even when a rogue 
cheats you, (though that, I confess, is a peculiarly 
irritating thing,) is not your wrath mollified by putting 
the thing thus : that the poor wretch probably needed 
very much the money out of which he cheated you, 
and would not have cheated you if he could have got 
it honestly % "When a horse-dealer sells you, at a re- 



44 TJic A rt of Putting Tilings. 

markably stiff figure, a broken-winded steed, do not 
yield to unqualified indignation. True, the horse- 
dealer is always ready to cheat, but feel for the poor 
fellow, every man thinks it right to cheat him; and 
with every man's hand against him, what wonder 
though his hand should be against every man % 
Everything, you see, turns on the way in which you 
put things. And it is so from earliest youth to latest 
age. The old scholar, whose delight is to sit among 
his books, thus puts his library : — 

My days among the dead are pass'd : 

Around me I behold. 
Where'er these casual eyes are cast. 

The mighty minds of old : 
My never-failing friends are they. 
With whom I converse night and day.* 

You see the library was not mere shelves of books, 
and the books were not mere printed pages. You re- 
member how Robinson Crusoe, in his cheerful moods, 
put his island home. He sat down to his lonely meal, 
but that was not how he put things. No. ' Here was 
my majesty, all alone by myself, attended by my 
servants :' his servants being the dog, parrot, and cat. 
I remember how a wealthy merchant, a man quite of 
the city as opposed to the country, once talked of 
emigrating to America, and buying an immense tract 

* Southey. 



The Art of Putting Things. 45 

of land, where he and his family should lead a simple, 
unartificial, innocent life. He was not in the least 
cut out for such a life, and would have been miserable 
in it, but he was fascinated with the notion because 
he put it thus : — ' I shall have great flocks and herds, 
and live in a tent like Abraham.'' And that way of 
putting things brought up before the busy man of the 
nineteenth century I know not what sweet picture of 
a primevally quiet and happy life. I can remember 
yet how, when I crept about my father's study, a little 
boy of three years old, I felt the magic of the art of 
putting things. All children are restless. It is im- 
possible for them to remain still, and we all know 
how a child in a study worries the busy scholar. All 
admonitions to keep quiet failed ; it was really im- 
possible to obey them. Creep, creep about; upset 
footstools ; pull off table-covers ; upset ink. But when 
the thing was put in a different way ; when the kind 
voice said, ' Now, you'll be my little dog : creep into 
your house there under the table, and He quite still,' 
there was no difficulty in obeying that command : 
and, except an occasional bow-wow, there was perfect 
stillness. The art of putting things had prevailed. It 
was necessary to keep still ; for a dog in a study, I 
knew, must keep still, and I was a dog. 

It must be a worrying thing for a great warrior or 
statesman, fighting a gi'eat battle, or introducing a 



46 TJic A ri of Putting Things. 

great legislative measure, to remember that the estima- 
tion in which he is to be held in his own day and 
country, and in other countries and ages, depends not 
at all on what his conduct is in itself, but entirely on 
the way in which it shall be put before mankind — 
represented, or misrepresented, in newspapers, in 
rumours, in histories. How very unlikely it is that 
history will ever put the case on its real merits : the 
characters of history will either be praised far above 
their deserts, or abused far beyond their sins. ' Do 
not read history to me,' said Sir Robert Walpole, 
' for that, I know, must be false.' History could be 
no more than the record of the way in which men had 
agreed to put things ; and those behind the scenes, 
the men who pull the wires which move the puppets, 
must often have reason to smile at the absurd mistakes 
into which the history-writing outsiders fall. And 
even apart from ignorance, or bias, or intention to 
deceive, what a fearful thought it must be to a great 
man taking a conspicuous part in some great solem- 
nity, such as the trial of a queen, or the impeachment 
of a governor-general, to reflect that this great solem- 
nity, and his own share in it, and how he looked, and 
what he said, may possibly be put before mankind by 
the great historian Mr. Wordy ! One can enter into 
Johnson's feeling when, on hearing that Boswell in- 
tended to write his biography, he exclaimed, in mingled 



TJie A rt of Putting Tilings. 47 



terror and fury — ' If I thought he contemplated writ- 
ing my Hfe, I should render that impossible by taking 
his ! ' It was something to shudder at, the idea of 
going do'wn to posterity as represented by a Boswell ! 
But the great lexicographer was mistaken : the Dutch- 
painter-like biography shewed him exactly as he was, 
the great, little, mighty, weak, manly, babyish mind 
and heart. And not great men alone, historical per- 
sonages, have this reason for disquiet and apprehen- 
sion. Don't you know, my reader not unversed in 
the ways of life, that it depends entirely on how the 
story is told, how the thing is represented or misrepre- 
sented, whether your conduct on any given occasion 
shall appear heroic or ridiculous, reasonable or absurd, 
natural or affected, modest or impudent : and don't 
you know, too, what a vast number of ill-set people are 
always ready to give the story the unfavourable turn, 
to put the matter in the bad light ; and how many 
more, not really ill-set, not really with any malicious 
intention, are prompted by their love of fun, in relating 
any act of any acquaintance, to try to set it in a ridicu- 
lous light? Your domestic establishment is shabby 
or unpretending, elegant or tawdry, just as the fancy 
of the moment may lead your neighbour to put the 
thing. Your equipage is a neat little turn-out or a 
shabby attempt, your house is quiet or dull, yourself a 
genius or a blockhead, just as it may strike your friend 



48 The A rt of Putting Tilings. 

on the instant to put the thing. And don't we all 
know some people — not bad people in the main — who 
never by any chance put the thing except in the un- 
favourable way? I have heard the self-same house 
called a snug little place and a miserable little hole ; 
the same man called a lively talker and an absurd 
rattlebrain ; the same person called a gentlemanlike 
man and a missy piece of affectation ; the same in- 
come called competence and starvation ; the same 
horse called a noble animal and an old white cow : — 
the entire difference, of course, lay in the fashion in 
which the nan-ator chose, from inherent bonhomie or 
inherent verjuice, to put the thing. While Mr. Bright 
probably regards it as the most ennobling occupation 
of humanity to buy in the cheapest and sell in the 
dearest market, Byron said, as implying the lowest 
degi'ee of degradation — 

Trust not for freedom to the Franks — 
They have a king who buys and sells ! 

And it is just the two opposite ways of putting the 
same admitted fact, to say that Britain is the first 
mercantile community of the world, and to say that 
we are a nation of shopkeepers. One way of putting 
the fact is the dignified, the other is the degrading. 
If a boy plays truant or falls asleep in church, it just 
depends on how you put it, or how the story is told, 



The A rt of P?itting Things. 49 

whether you are to see in all this the natural thought- 
lessness of boyhood, or a first step towards the gallows. 
' Billy Brown stole some of my apples,' says a kind- 
hearted man ; ' well, poor fellow, I daresay he seldom 
gets any.' ' Billy Brown stole my apples,' says the 
severe man ; ' ah, the vagabond, he is born to be 
hanged.' Sydney Smith put Catholic Emancipation 
as common justice and common sense ; Dr. M'Neile 
puts it as a great national sin, and the origin of the 
potato disease. John Foster mentions in his Diary, 
that he once expostulated with a great hulking, stupid 
bumpkin, as to some gross transgression of which he 
had been guilty. Little effect was produced on the 
bumpkin, for dense stupidity is a great duller of the 
conscience. Foster persisted : ' Do not you think,' 
he said, ' that the Almighty will be angry at such 
conduct as yours 1 ' Blockhead as the fellow was, he 
could take in the idea of my essay ; he replied, ' That 's 
just as A tak's ut ! ' But what struck little Paul 
Dombey as strange, that the same bells rung for wed- 
dings and for funerals, and that the same sound was 
merry or doleful just as we put it, is true of many 
things besides bells. The character of everything we 
hear or see is reflected upon it from our own minds. 
The sun sees the earth look bright because it first 
/nade it so. You go to a public meeting, my friend. 
You make a speech. You get on, you think, uncom- 

E 



50 The Art of Putting Things. 

monly well. When your auditor Mr. A. or Miss B. 
goes home, and is asked there what sort of appearance 
you made, don't you fancy that the reply will be 
affected in any appreciable degree by the actual fact ! 
It depends entirely on the state of the relator's nerves 
or digestion, or the passing fancy of the moment, 
whether you shall be said to have done delightfully 
or disgustingly ; whether you shall be said to have 
made a brilliant figure, or to have made a fool of 
yourself You never can be sure, though you spoke 
with the tongue of angels, but that ill-nature, peevish- 
ness, prejudice, thoughtlessness, may put the case that 
your speech was most abominable. Do you fancy that 
you could ever say or do anything that Mr. Snarling 
could not find fault with, or Miss Limejuice could not 
misrepresent % 

Years ago, I was accustomed to frequent the courts 
of law, and to listen with much interest to the great 
advocates of that time, as FoUett, Wilde, Thesiger, 
Kelly. Nowhere in the world, I think, is one so 
deeply impressed with the value of tact and skill in 
putting things, as in the Court of Queen's Bench at 
the trial of an important case by a jury. Does not 
all the enormous difference, as great as that between 
a country bumpkin and a hog, between Follett and 
Mr. Briefless, lie simply in their respective powers of 
putting things % The actual facts, the actual merits of 




the case, have very Httle indeed to do with the ver- 
dict, compared with the counsel's skill in putting 
them ; the artful marshalling of circumstances, the 
casting weak points into shadow, and bringing out 
strong points into glaring relief I remember how I 
used to look with admiration at one of these great 
men when, in his speech to the jury, he was approach- 
ing some circumstance in the case which made dead 
against him. It was beautiful to see the intellec- 
tual gladiator cautiously approaching the hostile fact ; 
coming up to it, tossing and turning it about, and 
finally shewing that it made strongly in his favour. 
Now, if that was really so, why did it look as if it 



5 2 TJie A rt of Pjitting TJiiiigs. 

made against him % Why should so much depend on 
the way in which he put it % Or, if the fact was in 
truth one that made against him, why should it be 
possible for a man to put it so that it should seem to 
make in his favour, and all without any direct falsifi- 
cation of facts or arguments, without any of that mere 
vulgar misrepresentation which can be met by direct 
contradiction? Surely it is not a desirable state of 
matters, that a plausible fellow should be able to 
explain away some very doubtful conduct of his own, 
and by skilful putting of things should be able to 
make it seem even to the least discerning that he is 
the most innocent and injured of human beings. And 
it is provoking, too, when you feel at once that his 
defence is a mere intellectual juggle, and yet, with all 
your logic, when you cannot just on the instant tear 
it to pieces, and put the thing in the light of truth. 
Indeed, so well is it understood that by tact and 
address you may so put things as to make the worse 
appear the better reason, that the idea generally con- 
veyed, when we talk of putting things, is, that there is 
something wrong, something to be adroitly concealed, 
some weak point in regard to which dust is to be 
thrown into too observant eyes. There is a common 
impression, not one of unqualified truth, that when 
all is above board, there is less need for skilful put- 
ting of the case. Many people think, though the case 



The A rt of Putting Things. 5 3 

is by no means so, that truth may always be depended 
on to tell its own story and produce its due impres- 
sion. Not a bit of it. However good my case 
might be, I should be sorry to intrust it to Mr. Num- 
skull, with Sir Fitzroy Kelly on the other side. 

It is a coarse and stupid expedient to have recourse 
to anything like falsification, in putting things as they 
would make best for yourself, reader. And there is 
no need for it. Unless you have absolutely killed a 
man and taken his watch, or done something equally 
decided, you can easily represent circumstances so as 
to throw a favourable light upon yourself and your 
conduct. It is a mistake to fancy that in this world 
a story must be either true or false, a deed either 
right or wrong, a man either good or bad. There are 
few questions which can be answered by Yes or No. 
Almost all actions and events are of mingled charac- 
ter ; and there is something to be said on both sides 
of almost every subject which can be debated. Who 
does not remember how, when he was a boy, and 
had done some mischief which he was too honest to 
deny, he revolved all he had done over and over, 
putting it in many lights, trying it in all possible 
points of view, till he had persuaded himself that he 
had done quite right, or at least that he had done 
nothing that was so very wrong, after all % There 
was a lurking feeling, probably, that all this was self- 



54 



TJic A rt of Putting Tilings. 



deception ; and oh ! how our way of putting the case, 
so favourably to ourselves, vanished into air when our 
teacher and governor sternly called us to account ! 
All those Jesuitical artifices were forgotten, and we 
just felt that we had done wrong, and there was no 
use in trying to justify it. 

The noble use of the power of putting things, is 
when a man employs that power to give tenfold force 
to truth. When you go and hear a great preacher, 
you sometimes come away wishing heartily that the 
impression he made on you would last : for you feel 
that though what struck you so much was not the 
familiar doctrine which you knew quite well before, 
but the way in which he put it, still that starding 
view of things was the right view. Probably in the 
pulpit more than anywhere else, we feel the difference 
between a man who talks about and about things, 
and another man who puts them so that \f&feel them. 
And when one thinks of all the ignorance, want, and 
misery which surround us in the wretched dwelhngs 
of the poor, which we know all about but take so 
coolly, it is sad to remember that truth does not 
make itself felt as it really is, but depends so sadly 
for the practical effect upon the skill with which it is 
put — upon the tact, graphic power, and earnest purpose 
of the man who tells it. A landed proprietor will pass a 
wretched row of cottages on his estate daily for years, 



TJlc a rt of Putting Things. 5 5 

yet never think of making an effort to improve them : 
who, when the thing is fairly put to him, will forthwith 
bestir himself to have things brought into a better state. 
He will wonder how he could have allowed matters to 
go on in that unhappy style so long ; but will tell you 
truly, that though the thing was before his eyes, he 
really never before thought of it in that light. 

Some people have a happy knack for putting in a 
pleasant way everything that concerns themselves. 
Mr. A.'s son gets a poor place as a bank clerk ; his 
father goes about saying that the lad has found a fine 
opening in business. The young man is ordained, and 
gets a curacy on Salisbury Plain ; his father rejoices 
that there, never seeing a human face, he has abun- 
dant leisure for study, and for improving his mind. 
Or, the curacy is in the most crowded part of Man- 
chester or Bethnal Green ; the father now rejoices 
that his son has opportunities of acquiring clerical ex- 
perience, and of visiting the homes of the poor. Such 
a man's house is in a well-wooded country ; the 
situation is delightfully sheltered. He removes to a 
bare district without a tree, — ah ! there he has beau- 
tiful pure air and extensive views. It is well for 
human beings when they have the pleasant art of 
thus putting things ; for many, we all know, have the 
art of putting things in just the opposite way. They 
look at all things through jaundiced eyes ; and as 



56 TJic Art of Puttijig Things. 

things appear to themselves, so they put them to 
others. You remember, reader, how once upon a 
time David Hume the historian kindly sent Rousseau 
a present of a dish of beef-steaks. Rousseau fired at 
this ; he discerned in it a deep-laid insult ; he //// // 
that Hume, by sending the steaks, meant to insinuate 
that he, Rousseau, could not afford to buy proper 
food for himself. Ah, I have known various Rous- 
seaus ! They had not the genius, indeed, but they 
had all the wrong-headedness. 

Who does not know the contrasted views of man- 
kind and of life that pervade all the writings of 
Dickens and of Thackeray ? It is the same world 
that lies before both, but how differently they put it ! 
And look at the accounts in the Blue and Yellow 
newspapers respectively, of the borough member's 
speech to his constituents last night in the Corn Ex- 
change. Judge by the account in the one paper, and 
he is a Burke for eloquence, a Peel for tact, a Shippen 
for incorruptible integrity. Judge by the account in 
the other, and you would wonder where the electors 
caught a mortal who combines so remarkably igno- 
rance, stupidity, carelessness, inefficiency, and dishon- 
esty. As for the speech, one journal declares it was 
fluent, the other that it was stuttering ; one that it was 
sense, the other that it was nonsense. Nor need it 
be supposed that either journal intends deliberate 



TJie A rt of Putting- Things. 5 7 

falsehood. Each beheves its own way of putting the 
case to be the right way ; and the truth, in most in- 
stances, doubtless lies midway between. But in fact, 
till the end of time, there will be at least two ways of 
putting everything. Perhaps the M.P, warmed with 
his subject, and threw himself heart and soul into his 
speech. Shall we say that he spoke with eloquent 
energy, or shall we put it that he bellowed like a 
bull? Was he quiet and correct? Then we may 
choose between saying that he is a classical speaker, 
and that he was as stiff as a poker. He made some 
jokes, perhaps : take your choice whether you shall 
call him clever or flippant, a wit or a buffoon. And 
so of everybody else. You know a clever, well-read 
young woman ; you may either call her such, or talk 
sneeringly of blue-stockings. You meet a lively, merry 
girl, who laughs and talks with all the frankness of 
innocence. Yotc would say of her, my kindly reader, 
something like what I have just said ; but crabbed 
Mrs. Backbite will have it that she is a romp, a bois- 
terous hoyden, of most unformed manners. Perhaps 
Mrs. Backbite, spitefully shaking her head, says she 
trusts, she really hopes, there is no harm in the girl ; 
but certainly no daughter of hers should be allowed 
to associate with her. And not merely does the way, 
favourable or unfavourable, in which the thing shall be 
put, depend mainly on the temperament of the person 




MANSE FROM CHURCHYARD GATE. 



who puts it, so that you shall know beforehand that 
Mr. Snarling will always give the unfavourable view, 
and Mr. Jollikin the favourable ; but a further element 
of disturbance is introduced by the fact, that often 
the narrator's mood is such, that it is a toss-up, five 
minutes before he begins to tell his story, whether he 
shall put the conduct of his hero as good or bad. 

Who needs the art of putting things more than 
the painter of portraits 1 Who sees so much of the 
littleness, the petty vanity, the silliness of mankind ? 
It must be hard for such a man to retain much respect 
for human nature. The lurking belief in the mind 
of every man that he is remarkably good-looking, 



TJie Art of Putting Things. 59 

concealed in daily intercourse with his fellows, breaks 
out in the painter's studio. And without positive 
falsification, how cleverly the artist often contrives to 
put the features and figure of his sitter in a satis- 
factory fashion ! Have not you seen the portrait of 
a plain, and even a very ugly person, which was 
strikingly like, and still very pleasant-looking and 
almost pretty? Have not you seen things so skil- 
fully put, that the little snob looked dignified, the 
vulgar boor gentlemanlike, the plain-featured woman 
angelic — and all the while the likeness was accurately 
preserved ? 

It seems to me that in the case of many of those 
fine things which stir the heart and bring moisture 
to the eye, it depends entirely on the way in which 
they are put, whether they shall strike us as pathetic 
or silly, as sublime or ridiculous. The venerable 
aspect of the dethroned monarch, led in the tri- 
umphal procession of the Roman emperor, and looking 
indifferently on the scene, as he repeated often the 
words of Solomon, ' Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ! ' 
depends much for the effect it always produces on 
the reader upon the stately yet touching fashion in 
which Gibbon tells the story. So with Hazlitt's often- 
recurring account of Poussin's celebrated picture, the 
JEt in Arcadia Ego. As for Burke flinging the dagger 
upon the floor of the House of Commons, and 



6o TJic A rt of Putting Thi?tgs. 

Brougham falling on his knees in the House of Peers, 
what a ridiculous representation Punch could give of 
such things ! What shall be said of Addison, often 
tipsy in life, yet passing away with the words ad- 
dressed to his regardless step-son, ' See in what peace 
a Christian can die !' We need not think of things 
which are essentially ridiculous, though their perpe- 
trators intended them to be sublime : as Lord Ellen- 
borough's proclamation about the Gates of Somnauth, 
Sir William Codrington's despatch as to the blowing- 
up of Sebastopol, and all the grand passages in the 
writings of Mr. Wordy. Let me confess that I think 
it a very unhealthy sign of the times, this love which 
now exists of putting gi-ave matters in a ridiculous 
light, which produces Comic Histories of England, 
Comic Blacksiones, Comic Parliajnentary Debates, Comic 
Latin Grammars, and the like. Dreary indeed must 
be the fun of such books ; but that is not the worst 
of them. Yet one cannot seriously object to such a 
facetious serial as Punch, which represents the funny 
element in our sad insular character. Punch lives by 
the art of putting things, and putting them in a single 
way ; but how wonderfully well, how successfully, 
how genially, he puts all things funnily ! But to 
burlesque Macbeth or Othello, to travesty Virgil, to 
parody the soliloquy in Hamlet, though it may be put- 
ting things in a novel and amusing way, approaches 



TJie Art of Putting Things. 6i 

to the nature of sacrilege. Sometimes, indeed, the 
ludicrous way of putting things has served an ad- 
mirable purpose ; as in the imitations of Southey's 
Sapphics and Kotzebue's morality in the Poetry of 
the Anti-jacobin. And the ludicrous way of putting 
things has sometimes brought them much more 
vividly home to ' men's business and bosoms,' as in 
Sydney Smith's description of the possible results of a 
French invasion. Nor has it failed to answer the end 
of most cogent argument, as in his description of Mrs. 
Partington sweeping back the Atlantic Ocean. 

Do not fancy, my friend, that you can by possi- 
bility so live that ill-natured folk will not be able to 
put everything you do unfavourably. The old man 
with the ass was a martyr to the desire so to act that 
there should be no possibility of putting what he did 
as wrong. And when John Gilpin's wife, for fear the 
neighbours should think her proud, caused the chaise 
to draw up five doors off, rely upon it some of the 
neighbours would say she did so in the design of 
making her carriage the more conspicuous. When 
you give a dinner-party, and after your guests are 
gone, sit down and review the progress of the enter- 
tainment, thinking how nicely everything went on, 
do you remember, madam, that at that same moment 
your guests are seated at their own homes, putting all 
the circumstances in quite a different way : laughing 



62 TJic A rt of Putting Tilings. 

at your hired greengrocer, who (you are just saying) 
looked so like a butler ; execrating your champagne, 
which (you are this moment flattering yourself) passed 
for the product of the grape and not of the goose- 
berry ; and generally putting yourself, your children, 
your house, your dinner, your company, your music, 
into such ridiculous lights, that, if you knew it, (which 
happily you never will,) you would wish that you had 
mingled a little strychnine with the vintage so vilified. 
Still, it is pleasant to believe that there is no real 
malice in the way in which most people cut up their 
friends behind their backs. You really have a very 
kindly feeling towards Mr. A. or Mrs. B., though you 
do turn them into ridicule in their absence. After 
laughing at Mr. A. to Mrs. B., you are quite ready to 
laugh at Mrs. B. to Mr. A. The truth appears to be, 
that all this is an instance of that reaction which is 
necessary to human beings. In people's presence 
politeness requires that you should put everything 
that concerns them in the most agreeable and favour- 
able way. Impatient of this constraint, you revenge 
yourself upon it whenever circumstances permit, by 
putting things in the opposite fashion. I feel not the 
least enmity towards Mr. Snooks for saying behind 
my back that my essays are wretched trash. He has 
frequently said in my presence that they are far supe- 
rior to anything ever written by Macaulay, Milton, 



TJic A rt of Putting Things. 6^ 

or Shakspeare. I knew that after my dear friend's 
civility had been subjected to so violent a strain as 
was implied in his making the latter declaration, it 
would of necessity fly back, like a released bow, 
whenever he left me ; and that the first mutual ac- 
quaintance he met would have the satisfaction of 
hearing the case put in a very different way. And no 
doubt, if my dear friend were put upon his oath, his 
true opinion of me would transpire as nearly midway 
between the two ways of putting it respectively before 
my face and behind my back. 

You are a country clergyman, let us say, my reader, 
with a small parish ; and while you do your duty 
faithfully and zealously, you spend a spare hour now 
and then upon a review or a magazine article. You 
like the thought that thus, from your remote solitude, 
you are addressing a larger audience than that which 
you address Sunday by Sunday. You think that 
reasonable and candid people would say that this is 
an improving and pleasant way of employing a little 
leisure time, instead of rusting into stupidity, or 
mooning about blankly, or smoking yourself into 
vacancy, or reading novels, or listening to and retail- 
ing gossip, or hanging about the streets of the neigh- 
bouring county town, or growing sarcastic and misan- 
thropic. But don't you remember, my dear friend, 
that although you put the case in this way, it is highly 



64 TJie A rt of Putting Tilings. 

probable that some of your acquaintances, whose 
proffered contributions to the periodical with which 
you are supposed to be connected have been ' declined 
with thanks,' and whom malignant editors exclude 
from the opportunity of enlightening an ungrateful 
world, may put the matter very differently indeed % 
True, you are always thoroughly prepared with your 
sermon on Sundays, you are assiduous in your care of 
the sick and the aged, you have cottage lectures here 
and there throughout the parish, you teach classes of 
children and young people, you know familiarly the 
face and the circumstances of every soul of your popu- 
lation, and you honestly give your heart and strength 
to your sacred calling, suffering nothing whatever to 
interfere with that : but do you fancy that all this dili- 
gence will prevent Miss Lemonjuice and Mr. Flyblow 
from exclaiming, 'All, see Mr. Smith ; isn't it dreadful? 
See how he neglects his proper work, and spends his 
time, his whole time, in writing articles for the Quar- 
terly Revietv ! It's disgraceful ! The bishop, if he 
did his duty, would pull him up !' 

A striking instance of the effect of skilfully putting 
things may be found in the diary of Warren Hastings. 
The great Governor-General always insisted that his 
conduct of Indian affairs had been just and beneficent, 
and that the charges brought by Burke and Sheridan 
were without foundation in truth. He declared that 



TJic A rt of Putting TJiings. 65 

he had that conviction in the centre of his being ; that 
he was as sure of it as of his own existence. But as 
he hstened to the opening speech of Burke, he tells us 
he saw things in a new light. He felt the spell of the 
way in which the great orator put things. Could this 
really be the right way % ' For half-an-hour,' says 
Hastings, ' I looked up at Burke in a reverie of 
wonder, and during that time I actually felt myself 
the most guilty being upon earth !' But Hastings 
adds that he did what the boy who has played truant 
does — he took refuge in his own way of putting things. 
' I recurred to my own heart, and there found what 
sustained me under all this accusation.' 

A young lad's choice of a profession depends mainly 
upon the way in which the life of that profession is 
put before him. If a boy is to go to the bar, it will 
be expedient to make the Chancellorship the promi- 
nent feature in the picture presented to him. It will 
be better to keep in the backgi-ound the lonely even- 
ings in the chambers at the Temple, the weary back- 
benches in court, the heart-sickening waiting year 
after year. And the first impression, strongly rooted, 
will probably last. I love my own profession. I 
would exchange its life and its work for no other 
position on earth ; but I feel that I owe part of its 
fascination to the fragi'ance of boyish fancies of it 
which linger yet. Blessed be the kind and judicious 

F 



66 TJic A rt of Putting Things. 

parent or preceptor, whose skilful putting of things 
long ago has given to our vocation, whatever it may 
be, a charm which can overcome the disgust which 
might otherwise come of the hard realities, the little 
daily worries, the discouragements and frustrated 
hopes ! How much depends on first impressions — on 
the way in which a man, a place, a book is put to us 
for the first time ! Something of cheerlessness and 
dreariness will always linger about even the summer 
aspect of the house which you first approached when 
the winter afternoon was closing in, dark, gusty, cold, 
miserable-looking. What a difference it makes to the 
little man who is to have a tooth pulled out, whether 
the dentist approaches with a grievous look, in silence, 
with the big forceps conspicuous in his hand ; or comes 
up cheerfully, with no display of steel, and says, with 
a smiling face, ' Come, my little friend, it will be 
over in a moment ; you will hardly have time to feel 
it ; you will stand it like a brick, and mamma will 
be proud of having such a brave little boy ! ' Or, if 
either man or boy has a long task to go through, how 
much more easily it will be done if it is put in separate 
divisions than if it is set before one all in a mass ! 
Divide et impera states a grand principle in the art of 
putting things. If your servant is to clear away a 
mass of snow, he will do it in half the time and with 
twice the pleasure if you first mark it out into squares. 



The A rt of Putting Things. 6y 

to be cleared away one after the other. By the make 
of our being we like to have many starts and many 
arrivals : it does not do to look too far on without a 
break. I remember the driver of a mail-coach telling 
me, as I sat on the box through a sixty-mile drive, 
that it would weary him to death to drive that road 
daily if it were as straight as a railway : he liked the 
turnings and windings, which put the distance in the 
form of successive bits. It was sound philosophy in 
Sydney Smith to advise us, whether physically or 
morally, to 'take short views.' It would knock you 
up at once if, when the railway carriage moved out of 
the station at Edinburgh, you began to trace in your 
mind's eye the whole route to London. Never do that. 
Think first of Dunbar, then of Newcastle, then of 
York, and, putting the thing thus, you will get over 
the distance without fatigue of mind. What little 
child would have heart to begin the alphabet, if, 
before he did so, you put clearly before him all the 
school and college work of which it is the beginning ? 
The poor little thing would knock up at once, wearied 
out by your Avant of skill in putting things. And so 
it is that Providence, kindly and gradually putting 
things, wiles us onward, still keeping hope and heart, 
through the trials and cares of life. Ah, if we had 
had it put to us at the outset how much we should 
have to go through, to reach even our present stage 



68 TJie A rt of Putting Tilings. 

in life, we should have been ready to think it the 
best plan to sit down and die at once ! But, in com- 
passion for human weakness, the Great Director and 
Shower of events practises the Art of Putting Things. 
Might not we sometimes do so when we do not % 
When we see some poor fellow grumbling at his lot, 
and shirking his duty, might not a little skill employed 
in putting these things in a proper light serve better 
than merely expressing our contempt or indignation % 
A single sentence might make him see that what he 
was complaining of was reasonable and right. It is 
quite wonderful from what odd and perverse points 
of view people will look at things : and then things 
look so very different. The hill behind your house, 
which you have seen a thousand times, you would not 
know if you approached it from some unwonted quarter. 
Now, if you see a man afflicted with a perverse twist 
of mind, making him put things in general or something 
in particular in a wrong way, you do him a much kinder 
turn in directing him how to put things rightly, than if 
you were a skilful surgeon and cured him of the most 
fearful squint that ever hid behind blue spectacles. 

Did not Franklin go to hear Wliitefield preach a 
charity sermon, resolved not to give a penny \ and was 
he not so thoroughly overcome by the great preacher's 
way of putting the claims of the charity which he was 
advocating, that he ended by emptying his pockets 



TJie A rt of Putting Things. 69 



into the plate ? I dare say Alexander the Great was 
somewhat staggered in his plans of conquest by Par- 
menio's way of putting things. ' After you have con- 
quered Persia, what will you do ? ' ' Then I shall con- 
quer India.' ' After you have conquered India, what 
will you dol' 'Conquer Scythia.' 'And after you 
have conquered Scythia, what will you do?' 'Sit 
down and rest' 'Well,' said Parmenio to the con- 
(peror, 'why not sit down and rest now?' I trust 
young Sheridan was proof against his father's way of 
putting things, when the young man said he meant to 
go down a coal-pit. ' Why go down a coal-pit % ' said 
Sheridan the elder. ' Merely to be able to say I have 
been there.' ' You blockhead,' replied the high-prin- 
cipled sire, ' what is there to keep you from saying so 
without going 1 ' 

I remember witnessing a decided success of the art 
of putting things. A vulgar rich man who had re- 
cently bought an estate in Aberdeenshire, exclaimed, 
' It is monstrous hard ! I have just had this morning 
to pay forty pounds of stipend to the parish minister 
for my property. Now I never enter the parish 
church,' (nor any other, he might have added,) ' and 
why should I pay to maintain a church to which I 
don't belong?' I omit the oaths which served as 
sauce. Now, that was Mr. Oddbody's way of putting 
things, and you would say his case was a hard one. 



70 The Art of Putting Things. 

But a quiet man who was present changed the aspect 
of matters. ' Is it not true, Mr. Oddbody,' he said, 
' that when you bought your estate its rental was 
reckoned after deducting the payment you mention ; 
that the exact value of your annual payment to the 
minister was calculated, and the amount deducted 
from the price you paid for the property % And is it 
not therefore true, that not a penny of that forty 
pounds really comes out of your pocket % ' Mr. Odd- 
body's face elongated. The bystanders unequivocally 
signified what they thought of him ; and as long as he 
lived he never failed to be remembered as the man 
who had tried to extort sympathy by false pre- 
tences. 

To no man is tact in putting things more essential 
than to the clergyman. An injudicious and unskilful 
preacher may so put the doctrines which he sets forth 
as to make them appear revolting and absurd. It is 
a fearful thing to hear a stupid fellow preaching upon 
the doctrine of Election. He may so put that doctrine 
that he shall fill every clever young lad who hears 
him with prejudices against Christianity, which may 
last through life. And in advising one's parishioners, 
especially in administering reproof where needful, let 
the parish priest, if he would do good, call into play 
all his tact. With the best intentions, through lack 
of skill in putting things, he may do great mischief. 



The A rt of Putting T /tings. y i 

Let the calomel be concealed beneath the jelly. 
Not that I counsel sneakiness ; that is worse than the 
most indiscreet honesty. There is no need to put 
things, like the dean immortalised by Pope, who, 
when preaching in the Chapel Royal, said to his 
hearers that unless they led religious lives they would 
ultimately reach a place ' which he would not men- 
tion in so polite an assembly.' Nor will it be ex- 
pedient to put things like the contemptible wretch 
who, preaching before Louis XIV., said, Nous ?nour- 
rons tous ; then, turning to the king, and bowing 
humbly, presqiie tous. And it is only in addressing 
quite exceptional congregations that it would now-a- 
days be regarded as a piece of proper respect for the 
mighty of the earth, were the preacher, in stating that 
all who heard him were sinners, to add, by way of re- 
servation, all who have less than a thousand a-year. 

Any man who approaches the matter with a candid 
spirit, must be much struck by the difference between 
the Protestant and the Roman Catholic ways of put- 
ting the points at issue between the two great Churches. 
The Roman prayers are in Latin, for instance. A 
violent Protestant says that the purpose is to keep 
the people in ignorance. A strong Romanist tells 
you that Latin was the universal language of edu- 
cated men when these prayers were drawn up ; and 
puts it that it is a fine thing to think that in all 



72 TJic A rt of Pnttiiig Things. 

Romish churches over Christendom the devotions of 
the people are expressed in the selfsame words. Take 
keeping back the Bible from the people. To us 
nothing appears more flagrant than to deprive any 
man of God's written word. Still the Romanist has 
something to say for himself He puts it that there 
is so much difficulty in understanding much of the 
Bible — that such pernicious errors have followed from 
false interpretations of it. Think, even, of the dogma 
of the infallibility of the Church. The Protestant 
puts that dogma as an instance of unheard-of arro- 
gance. The Romanist puts it as an instance of deep 
humility and earnest faith. He says he does not hold 
that the Church, in her own wisdom, is able to keep 
infalHbly right ; but he says that he has perfect con- 
fidence that God will not suffer the Church delibe- 
rately to fall into error. Here, certainly, we have two 
very different ways of putting the same things. 

But who shall say that there are no more than two 
ways of putting any incident, or any opinion, or any 
character? There are innumerable ways — ways as 
many as are the idiosyncrasies of the men that put 
them. You have to describe an event, have you 1 
Then you may put it in the plain matter-of-fact way, 
like the Times reporter ; or in the sublime way, like 
Milton and Mr. Wordy ; or in the ridiculous way, 
like Punch (of design) and Mr. Wordy (unintention- 



The Art of Putting Tilings. y^ 

ally) ; or in the romantic way, like Mr. G. P. R. James ; 
or in the minutely circumstantial way, like Defoe or 
Poe ; or in the affectedly simple way, like Peter Bell; 
or in the forcible, knowing way, like Macaulay ; or in 
the genial, manly, good-humoured way, like Sydney 
Smith ; or in the flippant way, like Mr. Richard 
Swiveller, who when he went to ask for an old gentle- 
man, inquired as to the health of the ' ancient buffalo ; ' 
or in the lackadaisical way, like many young ladies ; 
or in the whining, grumbling way, like many silly 
people whom it is unnecessary to name ; or in the 
pretentious, lofty way, introducing familiarly many 
titled names without the least necessity, like many 
natives of beautiful Erin. 

What nonsense it is to say, as it has been said, that 
the effect of anything spoken or written depends upon 
the essential thought alone ! Why, nine-tenths of the 
practical power depends on the way in which it is put. 
Somebody has asserted that any thought which is not 
eloquent in any words whatever, is not eloquent at all. 
He might as well have said that black was white. 
Not to speak of the charm of the mere music of 
gracefully modulated words, and fehcitously arranged 
phrases, how much there is in beautifully logical 
treatment, and beautifully clear development, that 
will interest a cultivated man in a speech or a treatise, 
quite irrespective of its subject ! I have known a 



74 TJic A r/ of Putting Tilings. 

very eminent man say that it was a delight to him to 
hear Follett make a speech, he did not care about 
what. The matter was no matter ; the intellectual 
treat was to watch how the great advocate put it. 
And we have all read with delight stories with no 
incident and little character, yet which derived a 
nameless fascination from the way in which they were 
told. Tell me truly, my fair reader, did you not shed 
some tears over Dickens's story of Richard Double- 
dick % Could you have read that story aloud without 
breaking down % And yet, was there ever a story 
with less in it % But how beautifully Dickens put 
what little there was, and how the melody of the 
closing sentences of the successive paragraphs lingers 
on the ear ! And you have not forgotten the exquisite 
touches with which Mrs. Stowe put so simple a matter 
as a mother looking into her dead baby's drawer. I 
have known an attempt at the pathetic made on a 
kindred topic provoke yells of laughter ; but I could 
not bear the woman, and hardly the man, who could 
read Mrs. Stowe's putting of that simple conception 
without the reverse of smiles. Many readers, too, will 
not forget how much more sharply they have seen many 
places and things, from railway-engine sheds to the 
Britannia Bridge, when put by the graphic pen of Sir 
Francis Head. That lively baronet is the master of 
clear, sharp presentment. 



TJic Art of Putting Things. 75 



I have not hitherto spoken of such ways of putting 
things as were practised in King Hudson's raihvay 
reports, or in those of the Glasgow Western Bank, 
cooked to make things pleasant by designed misrepre- 
sentation. So far we have been thinking of compara- 
tively innocent variations in the ways of putting things 
— of putting the best foot foremost in a comparatively 
honest way. But how much intentional misrepresen- 
tation there is in British society ! How few people 
can tell a thing exactly as they saw it ! It goes in one 
colour, and comes out another, like light through 
tinted glass. It is rather amusing, by the way, when 
a friend comes and tells you a story which he heard 
from yourself, but so put that you hardly know it 
again. Unscrupulous putters of things should have 
good memories. There is no reckoning the ways in 
which, by varying the turn of an expression, by a tone 
or look, an entirely false view may be given of a con- 
versation, a transaction, or an event. A lady says to 
her cook, You are by no means overworked. The 
cook complains in the servants' hall that her mistress 
said she had nothing to do. Lies, in the sense of 
pure inventions, are not common, I believe, among 
people with any claim to respectability ; but it is per- 
fectly awful to think how great a part of ordinary con- 
versation, especially in little country towns, consists in 
putting things quite differently from the actual fact ; in 



76 TJic A rt of Putting Tilings. 

short, of wilful misrepresentation. Many people can- 
not resist the temptation to deepen the colours, and 
strengthen the lines, of any narration, in order to make 
it more telling. Unluckily, things usually occur in 
life in such a manner as just to miss what would give 
them a point and make a good story of them ; and the 
temptation is strong to make them, by the deflection 
of a hair's-breadth, what they ought to have been. 

It is sad to think, that in ninety-nine out of every 
hundred cases in which things are thus untruly put, 
the representation is made worse than the reality. 
Few old ladies endeavour, by their imaginative put- 
ting of things, to exhibit their acquaintances as wiser, 
better, and more amiable, than the fact. An excep- 
tion may be made whenever putting her friends and 
their affairs in a dignified light would reflect credit 
upon the old lady herself Then, indeed, their income 
is vast, their house is magnificent, their horses are 
Eclipses, their conversation is brilliant, their attention 
to their friends unwearying and indescribable. Alas 
for our race : that we lean to evil rather than to good, 
and that it is so much more easy and piquant to pitch 
into a man than to praise him ! 

Let us rejoice that there is one happy case in which 
the way of putting things, though often false, is always 
favourable. I mean the accounts which are given in 
country newspapers of the character and the doings 



TJic Art of Putting Things. yy 

of the great men of the district. I often admire the 
country editor's skill in putting all things (save the 
speech of the opposition M.P., as already mentioned) 
in such a rosy light ; nor do I admire his genial bo7i- 
homie less than his art. If a marquis makes a stam- 
mering speech, it is sure to be put as most interesting 
and eloquent. If the rector preaches a dull and stupid 
charity sermon, it is put as striking and effective. A 
public meeting, consisting chiefly of empty benches, 
is put as most respectably attended. A gift of a little 
flannel and coals at Christmas-time, is put as season- 
able munificence. A bald and seedy building, just 
erected in the High Street, is put as chaste and clas- 
sical ; an extravagant display of gingerbread decora- 
tion, is put as gorgeous and magnificent. In brief, 
what other men heartily wish this world were, the con- 
ductors of local prints boldly declare that it is. What- 
ever they think a great man would like to be called, 
that they make haste to call him. Happy fellows, if 
they really believe that they live in such a world and 
among such beings as they put ! Their gushing heart 
is too much for even their sharp head, and they see all 
things glorified by the sunshine of their own exceeding 
amiability. 

The subject greatens on me, but the paper dwindles : 
the five-and-forty fair expanses of foolscap are darkened 
at last. It would need a volume, not an essay, to do 



78 



TJie A ri of Pittting Things. 



this matter justice. Sir Bulwer Lytton has declared, 
in pages charming but too many, that the world's great 
question is, What will he do with It 1 I shall not 
debate the point, but simply add, that only second to 
that question in comprehensive reach and in practical 
importance is the question — How will he put It 1 




PUTTING THE STONE. 




CHAPTER III. 



CONCERNING TWO BLISTERS OF HUMANITY 



BEING THOUGHTS ON PETTY MALIGNITY AND PETTY 
TRICKERY. 

IT is highly improbable than any reader, of ordinary 
power of imagination, would guess the particular 
surface on which the paper is spread whereon I am 



8o Tzvo Blisters of Humanity. 

at the present moment writing. Such is the reflection 
which flows naturally from my pencil's point as it be- 
gins to darken this page. I am seated on a manger, 
in a very light and snug stable, and my paper is spread 
upon a horse's face, occupying the flat part between 
the eyes. You would not think, unless you tried, 
what an extensive superficies may there be found. If 
you put a thin book next the horse's skin, you will 
write with the greater facility : and you will find, as 
you sit upon the edge of the manger, that the animal's 
head occupies a position which, as regards height and 
slope, is sufiiciently convenient. His mouth, it may 
be remarked, is not far from your knees, so that it 
would be highly inexpedient to attempt the operation 
with a vicious, biting brute, or indeed with any horse 
of whose temper you are not well assured. But you, 
my good Old Boy, (for such is the quadruped's name,) 
yoti. would not bite your master. Too many carrots 
have you received from his hand ; too many pieces of 
bread ftive you licked up from his extended palm. A 
thought has struck me which I wish to preserve in 
writing, though indeed at this rate it will be a long 
time before I work my way to it. I am waiting here 
for five minutes till my man-servant shall return with 
something for which he has been sent, and wherefore 
should even five minutes be wasted % Life is not very 
long, and the minutes in which one can write with ease 



Two Blisters of Humanity. 



8i 



are not very many. And perhaps the newness of such 
a place of writing may communicate something of fresh- 
ness to what is traced by a somewhat jaded hand. 
You winced a httle, Old Boy, as I disposed my book 
and this scrap of an old letter on your face, but now 
you stand perfectly still. On either side of this page 
I see a large eye looking down wistfully ; above the 
page a pair of ears are cocked in quiet curiosity, but 
with no indication of fear. Not that you are deficient 
in spirit, my dumb friend ; you will do your twelve 
miles an hour with any steed within some miles of 
you ; but a long course of kindness has gentled you 
as well as Mr. Rarey could have done, though no more 
than seven summers have passed over your head. Let 
us ever, kindly reader, look with especial sympathy 
and regard at any inferior animal on which the doom 
of man has fallen, and which must eat its food, if not 
in the sweat of its brow, then in that of its sides. 
Curious, that a creature should be called all through 
life to labour, for which yet there remains no rest ! 
As for us human beings, we can understand and we 
can bear with much evil, and many trials and sorrows 
here, because we are taught that all these form the 
discipline which shall prepare us for another world, a 
world that shall set this right. But for you, my poor 
fellow-creature, I think with sorrow as I write here 
upon your head, there remains no such immortality 

G 



82 Two Blisters of Humanity. 

as remains for me. What a difference between us ! 
You to your sixteen or eighteen years here, and then 
obUvion, I to my threescore and ten, and then eter- 
nity ! Yes, the difference is immense ; and it touches 
me to think of your life and mine, of your doom and 
mine. I know a house where, at morning and even- 
ing prayer, when the household assembles, among 
the servants there always walks in a certain shaggy 
little dog, who listens with the deepest attention and 
the most solemn gravity to all that is said, and then, 
when prayers are over, goes out again with his friends. 
I cannot witness that silent procedure without being 
much moved by the sight. Ah, my fellow-creature, 
this is something in which you have no part ! Made 
by the same Hand, breathing the same air, sustained 
like us by food and drink, you are witnessing an act 
of ours which relates to interests that do not concern 
you, and of which you have no idea. And so, here 
we are, you standing at the manger, Old Boy, and I 
sitting upon it ; the mortal and the immortal ; close 
together ; your nose on my knee, my paper on your 
head ; yet with something between us broader than 
the broad Atlantic. As for you, if you suffer here, 
there is no other life to make up for it. Yet it would 
be well if many of those who are your betters in the 
scale of creation, fulfilled their Creator's purposes as 
well as you. He gave you strength and swiftness, 



Two Blisters of Humanity. 83 

and you use these to many a valuable end : not many 
of the superior race will venture to say that they turn 
the powers God gave them to account as worthy of 
their nature. If it come to the question of deserving, 
you deserve better than me. Forgive me, my fellow- 
creature, if I have sometimes given you an angry flick, 
when you shied a little at a pig or a donkey. But I 
know you bear me no malice ; you forget the flicks, 
(they are not many,) and you think rather of the bread 
and the carrots, of the times I have pulled your ears, 
and smoothed your neck, and patted your nose. And 
forasmuch as this is all your life, I shall do my very 
best to make it a comfortable one. Happiness, of 
course, is something which you can never know. Yet, 
my friend and companion through many weary miles, 
you shall have a deep-littered stall, and store of corn 
and hay so long as I can give them ; and may this 
hand never write another line if it ever does you 
wilful injury ! 

Into this paragraph has my pencil of its own accord 
rambled, though it was taken up to write about some- 
thing else. And such is the happiness of the writer 
of essays : he may wander about the world of thought 
at his will. The style of the essayist has attained 
what may be esteemed the perfection of freedom, 
when it permits him, in writing upon any subject 
whatsoever, to say whatever may occur to him upon 



84 Two Blisters of Hitmanity. 

any other subject. And truly it is a pleasing thing 
for one long trammelled by the requirements of a 
rigorous logic, and fettered by thoughts of symmetry, 
connexion, and neatness in the discussion of his topic, 
to enter upon a fresh field where all these things go 
for nothing, and to write for readers many of whom 
would never notice such characteristics if they were 
present, nor ever miss them if they were absent. 
There is all the difference between plodding wearily 
along the dusty highway, and rambling through green 
fields, and over country stiles, leisurely, saunteringly, 
going nowhere in particular. You would not wish to be 
always desultory and rambling, but it is pleasant to be 
so now and then. And there is a delightful freedom 
about the feeling that you are producing an entirely 
unsymmetrical composition. It is fearful work, if you 
have a thousand thoughts and shades of thought about 
any subject, to get them all arranged in what a logician 
would call their proper places. It is like having a 
dissected puzzle of a thousand pieces given you in 
confusion, and being required to fit all the little pieces 
of ivory into their box again. By most men this work 
of orderly and symmetrical composition can be done 
well only by its being done comparatively slowly. In 
the case of ordinary folk the mind is a machine, which 
may indeed, by putting on extra pressure, be worked 
faster ; but the result is the deterioration of the 



Tzvo Blisters of Humanity. 85 

material which it turns off. It is an extraordinary 
gift of nature and training, when a man is hke FoUett, 
who, after getting the facts of an involved and intri- 
cate case into his mind only at one or two o'clock in 
the morning, could appear in Court at nine a.m., and 
there proceed to state the case and all his reasonings 
upon it, with the very perfection of logical method, 
every thought in its proper place, and all this at the 
rate of rapid extempore speaking. The difference 
between the rate of writing and that of speaking, 
with most men, makes the difference between pro- 
ducing good material and bad. A great many minds 
can turn off a fair manufacture at the rate of writing, 
which, when overdriven to keep pace with speaking, 
will bring forth very poor stuff" indeed. And besides 
this, most people cannot grasp a large subject in all 
its extent and its bearings, and get their thoughts 
upon it marshalled and sorted, unless they have at 
least two or three days to do so. At first all is con- 
fusion and indefiniteness, but gradually things settle 
into order. Hardly any mind, by any effort, can get 
them into order quickly. If at all, it is by a tre- 
mendous exertion ; whereas the mind has a curious 
power, without any perceptible effort, of arranging in 
order thoughts upon any subject, if you give it time. 
Who that has ever written his ideas on some involved 
point but knows this % You begin by getting up 



86 Two Blisters of Humanity. 

information on the subject about which you are to 
write. You throw into the mind, as it were, a great 
heap of crude, unordered material. From this book 
and that book, from this review and that newspaper, 
you collect the observations of men who have re- 
garded your subject from quite different points of 
view, and for quite different purposes ; you throw 
into the mind cartload after cartload of facts and 
opinions, with a despairing wonder how you will ever 
be able to get that huge, contradictory, vague mass 
into anything like shape and order. And if, the 
minute you had all your matter accumulated, you 
were called on to state what you knew or thought 
upon the subject, you could not do so for your life in 
any satisfactory manner. You would not know where 
to begin, or how to go on ; it would be all confusion 
and bewilderment. Well, do not make the slightest 
eff"ort. What is impossible now will be quite easy by 
and by. The peas, which cost a sovereign a pint at 
Christmas, are quite cheap in tlieir proper season. 
Go about other things for three or four days : and at 
the end of that time you will be aware that the 
machinery of your mind, voluntarily and almost un- 
consciously playing, has sorted and arranged that 
mass of matter which you threw into it. Where all 
was confusion and uncertainty, all is now order 
and clearness ; and you see exactly where to begin, 



Two Blisters of Humanity. 87 



and what to say next, and where and how to leave 
off. 

The probability is, that all this has not been done 
without an effort, and a considerable amount of labour. 
But then, instead of the labour having been all at 
once, it has been very much subdivided. The subject 
was simmering in your mind all the while, though 
you were hardly aware of it. Time after time, you 
took a little run at it, and saw your way a little 
farther through it. But this multitude of little sepa- 
rate and momentary efforts does not count for much ; 
though in reality, if they were all put together, they 
would probably be found to have amounted to as 
much as the prolonged exertion which would at a 
single heat have attained the end. A large result, 
attained by innumerable little detached efforts, seems 
as if it had been attained without any effort at all. 

I love a parallel case ; and I must take such cases 
from my ordinary experience. Yesterday, passing a 
little cottage by the wayside, I perceived at the door 
the carcase of a very large pig extended on a table. 
Approaching, as is my wont, the tenant of the cottage 
and owner of the pig, I began to converse with him 
on the size and fatness of the poor creature which 
had that morning quitted its sty for ever. It had 
been sJiot., he told me ; for such, in these parts, is at 
present the most approved way of securing for swine 



88 Tzvo Blisters of Humanity. 

an end as little painful as may be, I admired the 
humanity of the intention, and hoped that it might 
be crowned with success. Then my friend the pro- 
prietor of the bacon began to discourse on the philo- 
sophy of the rearing of pigs by labouring men. No 
doubt, he said, the four pounds, or thereabout, which 
he would get for his pig, would be a great help to a 
hard-working man with five or six little children. 
But after all, he remarked, it was likely enough that 
during the months of the pig's life, it had bit by bit 
consumed and cost him as much as he would get for 
it now. But then, he went on, it cost us that in little 
sums we hardly felt ; while the four pounds it will 
sell for come all in a lump, and seem to give a very 
perceptible profit. Successive unfelt sixpences had 
mounted up to that considerable sum ; even as five 
hundred little unfelt mental efforts had mounted up to 
the large result of sorting and methodising the mass 
of cmde fact and opinion of which we were thinking a 
little while ago. 

Having worked through this preliminary matter, 
(which will probably be quite enough for some readers, 
even as the Solan goose, which does but whet the 
appetite of the Highlander, annihilates that of the 
Sassenach,) I now come to the subject which was in 
my mind when I began to write on the horse's head. 
I am not in the stable now ; for the business which 



Two Blisters of Humanity. 89 

detained me there is long since despatched : and after 
all, it is more convenient to write at one's study- 
table. I wish to say something concerning certain 
evils which press upon humanity ; and which are to 
the feeling of the mind very much what a mustard- 
blister is to the feeling of the body. To the healthy 
man or woman they probably do not do much serious 
harm ; but they maintain a very constant irritation. 
They worry and annoy. It is extremely interesting, 
in reading the published diaries of several great and 
good men, to find them recording on how many days 
they were put out of sorts, vexed and irritated, and 
rendered unfit for their work of writing, by some 
piece of petty malignity or petty trickery. How 
well one can sympathise with that good and great, 
and honest and amiable and sterHng man. Dr. 
Chalmers, when we find him recording in his diary, 
when he was a country parish minister, how he was 
unable to make satisfactory progress with his sermon 
one whole forenoon, because some tricky and over- 
reaching farmer in the neighbourhood drove two 
calves into a field of his glebe, where the great man 
found them in the morning devouring his fine young 
clover ! There was something very irritating and 
annoying in the paltry dishonesty. And the sensitive 
machinery of the good man's mind could not work 
sweetly when the gritty grains of the small vexation 



90 Tzvo Blisters of Humanity. 

were fretting its polished surface. Let it be remarked 
in passing, that the pecuhar petty dishonesty of 
driving cattle into a neighbouring proprietor's field, 
is far from being an uncommon one. And let me 
inform such as have suffered from it of a remedy 
against it which has never been known to fail. If 
the trespassing animals be cows, wait till the after- 
noon : then have them well milked, and send them 
home. If horses, let them instantly be put in carts, 
and sent off ten miles to fetch lime. A sudden 
strength will thenceforward invest your fences ; and 
from having been so Open that no efforts on the part 
of your neighbours could keep their cattle from stray- 
ing into your fields, you will find them all at once 
become wholly impervious. 

But, to return, I maintain that these continual 
blisters, of petty trickery and petty malignity, produce 
a very vexatious effect. You are quite put about at 
finding out one of your servants in some petty piece 
of dishonesty or deception. You are decidedly wor- 
ried if you happen to be sitting in a cottage where 
your coachman does not know that you are ; and if 
you discern from the window that functionary, who 
never exercises your horses in your presence save at a 
walk, galloping them furiously over the hard stones ; 
shaking their legs and endangering their wind. It is 
annoying to find your haymakers working desperately 



Tivo Blisters of Humanity. 9 1 

hard and fast when you appear in the field, not aware 
that fi-om amid a Httle clump of wood you had dis- 
cerned them a minute before reposing quietly upon 
the fragrant heaps, and possibly that you had over- 
heard them saying that they need not work very hard, 
as they were working for a gentleman. You would 
not have been displeased had you found them honestly 
resting on the sultry day : but you are annoyed by the 
small attempt to deceive you. Such pieces of petty 
trickery put you more out of sorts than you would 
like to acknowledge : and you are likewise ashamed 
to discover that you mind so much as you do, when 
some good-natured friend comes and informs you how 
Mr. SnarUng has been misrepresenting something you 
have said or done ; and Miss Limejuice has been 
telling lies to your prejudice. You are a clergyman, 
perhaps ; and you said in your sermon last Sunday 
that, strong Protestant as you are, you believed that 
many good people may be found in the Church of 
Rome. Well, ever since then, Miss Limejuice has 
not ceased to rush about the parish, exclaiming in 
every house she entered, ' Is not this awful % Here, 
on Sunday morning, the rector said that we ought all 
to become Roman Catholics ! One comfort is, the 
Bishop is to have him up directly. I was always sure 
that he was a Jesuit in disguise.' Or you are a country 
gentleman ; and at an election time you told one of 



92 Two Blisters of Humanity. 

your tenants that such a candidate was your friend, 
and that you would be happy if he could conscien- 
tiously vote for him, but that he was to do just what 
he thought right. Ever since, Mr. Snarling has been 
spreading a report that you went, drunk, into your 
tenant's house, that you thrust your fist in his face, that 
you took him by the collar and shook him, that you 
told him that, if he did not vote for your friend, you 
would turn him out of your farm, and send his wife 
and children to the workhouse. For in such playful 
exaggerations do people in small communities not un- 
frequently indulge. Now, you are vexed when you 
hear of such pieces of petty malignity. They don't 
do you much harm ; for most people whose opinion 
you value, know how much weight to attach to any 
statement of Miss Limejuice and Mr. Snarling ; and 
if you try to do your duty day by day where God has 
put you, and to live an honest, Christian life, it will 
go hard but you will live down such malicious vilifi- 
cation. But these things worry. They act as blisters, 
in short, without the medicinal value of blisters. And 
little contemptible worries do a great deal to detract 
from the enjoyment of life. To meet great misfortunes 
we gather up our endurance, and pray for Divine 
support and guidance ; but as for small blisters, the 
insect cares (as James Montgomery called them) of 
daily life, we are very ready to think that they are 



Tzvo Blisters of Humanity. 93 

too little to trouble the Almighty with them, or even 
to call up our fortitude to face them. This is not a 
sermon ; but let it be said that whosoever would 
learn how rightly to meet the perpetually-recurring 
worries of work-day existence, should read an ad- 
mirable little treatise by Mrs. Stowe, the authoress 
of Uncle Tovi's Cabin, entitled Earthly Care a 
Heavenly Discipline. The price of the work is one 
penny, but it contains advice which is worth an un- 
counted number of pence. Nor, as I think, are there 
to be found many more corroding and vexatious 
agencies than those which have been already named. 
To know that your servants, or your humbler neigh- 
bours, or your tradespeople, or your tenantry, or your 
scholars, are practising upon you a system of petty 
deception ; or to be informed (as you are quite sure 
to be informed) how such and such a mischievous (or 
perhaps only thoughtless) acquaintance is putting 
words into your mouth which you never uttered, or 
abusing your wife and children, or gloating over your 
failure to get into Parliament, or the lameness of your 
horses, or the speech you stuck in at the recent public 
dinner ; — all these things are pettily vexatious to 
many men. No doubt, over-sensitiveness is abun- 
dantly foolish. Some folk appear not merely to be 
thin-skinned, but to have been (morally) deprived of 
any skin at all ; and such folk punish themselves 



94 Ttvo Blisters of Hjimanity. 

severely enough for their folly. They wince when 
any one comes near them. The Pope may go wrong, 
but they cannot. It is treasonable, it is inexpiable 
sin, to hint that, in judgment, in taste, in conduct, it 
is possible for them to deviate by a hair's-breadth 
from the right line of perfection. Indeed, I believe 
that no immorality, no criminality, would excite such 
wrath in some men, as to tread upon a corner of their 
self-conceit. Yet it is curious how little sympathy 
these over-sensitive people have for the sensitiveness 
of other people. You would say they fancied that 
the skin of which they have been denuded has been 
applied to thicken to rhinoceros callousness the moral 
hide of other men. They speak their mind freely to 
their acquaintances of their acquaintances' belong- 
ings. They will tell an acquaintance (they have no 
friends, so I must repeat the word) that he madfe a 
very absurd speech, that she sung very badly, that 
the situation of his house (which he cannot leave) is 
abominably dull, that his wife is foolish and devoid of 
accomplishments, that her husband is a man of medi- 
ocre abilities, that her little boy has red hair and a 
squint, that the potatoes he rears are abominably bad, 
that he is getting unwieldily stout, that his riding- 
horse has no hair on his tail. All these things, and a 
hundred more, such people say with that mixture of 
dulness of perception and small malignity of nature 



Tivo Blisters of Humanity. 95 

which go to make what is vulgarly called ' a person 
who speaks his mind.' The right way to meet such 
folk is by an instant reciprocal action. Just begin to 
speak your mind to them, and see how they look. 
Tell them, with calm politeness, that before express- 
ing their opinion so confidently, they should have 
considered what their opinion was worth. Tell them 
that civility requires that you should listen to their 
opinion, but that they may be assured that you will 
act upon your own. Tell them what you think of 
their spelling, their punctuation, their features, their 
house, their carpets, their window-curtains, their 
general standing as members of the human race. 
How blue they will look ! They are quite taken 
aback when the same petty malignity and insolence 
which they have been accustomed for years to carry 
into their neighbours' territory is suddenly directed 
against their own. And you will find that not only 
are they themselves skinlessly sensitive, but that their 
sensitiveness is not bounded by their own mental and 
corporeal being ; and that it extends to the extreme 
limits of their horses' legs, to the very top of their 
chimney-pots, to every member of the profession 
which was honoured by the choice of their great- 
grandfather. 

You have observed, no doubt, that the mention of 
over-sensitive people acted upon the writer's train of 



96 Two Blisters of Humanity. 

thought as a pair of points in the rails act upon a 
railway train. It shunted me off the main line ; and 
in these remarks on people who talk their mind, I 
have been, so to speak, running along a siding. To 
go back to the point where I left the line, I observe, 
that although it is very foolish to mind much about 
such small matters as being a little cheated day by 
day, and a good deal misrepresented now and then 
by amiable acquaintances, still it is the fact that even 
upon people of a healthful temperament such things 
act as moral blisters, as moral pebbles in one's boots. 
The petty malignity which occasionally annoys you is 
generally to be found among your acquaintances, and 
people of the same standing with yourself ; while the 
petty trickery for the most part exists in the case of 
your inferiors. I think one always feels the better 
for looking any small evil of life straight in the face. 
To define a thing, to fix its precise dimensions, almost 
invariably makes it look a good deal smaller. Inde- 
finiteness much increases apparent size ; so let us now 
examine the size and the operation of these blisters 
of humanity. 

As for petty malignity, my reader, have you not 
seen a great deal of it % There are not many men 
who appear to love their neighbours as themselves. 
No one enjoys a misfortune or disappointment which 



Two Blisters of Hiimaniiy. 97 

befals himself: but there is too much truth in the 
smart Frenchman's saying, that there is something 
not entirely disagreeable to us in the misfortunes of 
even our very best friends. The malignity, indeed, 
is petty. It is only in small matters. And it is 
rather in feeling than in action. Even that sour 
Miss Limejuice, though she would be very glad if 
your horse fell lame or your carriage upset, would not 
see you drowning without doing her very best to save 
you. Ah, poor thing ! she is not so bad, after all. 
This has been to her but a bitter world ; and no 
wonder if she is, on the surface, a little embittered by 
it. But when you get fairly through the surface of 
her nature, as real misfortunes and trials do, there is 
kindliness about that withered heart yet. She would 
laugh at you if you broke down in your speech on the 
hustings ; but she would throw herself in the path of 
a pair of furious runaway horses, to save a little child 
from their trampling feet. I do not believe that 
among ordinary people, even in a gossiping little 
country town, there is much real and serious malice 
in this world. I cling to that belief; for if many 
men were truly as mischievous as you would some- 
times think when you hear them talk, one might turn 
misanthrope and hermit at once. There is hardly a 
person you know who would do you any material 
injury ; not one wlio would cut down your roses, or 

H 



98 Tzvo Blisters of Humanity. 

splash your entrance-gate with mud ; not one who 
would not gladly do you a kind turn if it lay within 
his power. Yet there are a good many who would 
with satisfaction repeat any story which might be a 
little to your disadvantage ; which might tend to 
prove that you are rather silly, rather conceited, 
rather ill-informed. You have various friends who 
would not object to shew up any ridiculous mistake 
you might happen to make ; who would never forget 
the occasion on which it appeared that you had never 
heard of the Spectator or Sir Roger de Coverley, or 
that you thought that Mary Queen of Scots was the 
mother of George III. You have various friends who 
would preserve the remembrance of the day on which 
the rector rebuked you for talking in church ; or on 
which your partner and yourself fell flat on the floor 
of the ball-room at the county town of Oatmealshire, 
in the midst of a galop. You have various good- 
natured friends to whom it would be a positive enjoy- 
ment to come and tell you what a very unfavourable 
opinion Mr. A. and Mrs. B. and Miss C. had been 
expressing of your talents, character, and general con- 
duct. How true was the remark of Sir Fretful Pla- 
giary, that it is quite unnecessary for any man to take 
pains to learn anything bad that has been said about 
him, inasmuch as it is quite sure to be told him by 
some good-natured friend or other ! You have various 



Tzvo Blisters of Humanity. 99 

acquaintances who will be very much gratified when a 
rainy day spoils the pic-nic to which you have invited 
a large party ; and who will be perfectly enraptured, if 
you have hired a steamboat for the occasion, and if 
the day proves so stormy that every soul on board is 
deadly sick. And indeed it is satisfactory to think 
that in our uncertain climate, where so many festal 
days are marred as to their enjoyment by drenching 
showers, there is compensation for the sufferings of 
the people who are ducked, in the enjoyment which 
that fact affords to very many of their friends. By 
taking a larger view of things, you discover that there 
is good in everything. You were Senior Wrangler : 
you just miss being made a Bishop at forty-two. No 
doubt that was a great disappointment to yourself; 
but think what a joy it was to some scores of fellows 
whom you beat at College, and who hate you accord- 
ingly. Some months ago a proprietor in this county 
was raised to the peerage. His tenantry were enter- 
tained at a public dinner in honour of the event. 
The dinner was held in a large canvas pavilion. The 
day came. It was fearfully stormy, and torrents of 
rain fell. A perfect shower-bath was the portion of 
many of the guests ; and finally the canvas walls 
and roof broke loose, smashed the crockery, and 
whelmed the feast in fearful ruin. During the nine 
days which followed, the first remark made by every 



lOO Tivo Blisters of Htimafiify. 

one you met was, ' What a sad pity about the storm 
spoihng the dinner at Stuckup Place ! ' And the 
countenance of every one who thus expressed his 
sorrow was radiant with joy ! And quite natural too. 
They would have felt real regret had the new peer 
been drowned or shot : but the petty malignity Avhich 
dwells in the human bosom made them rejoice at the 
small but irritating misfortune which had befallen. 
Shall I confess it, mca culpa, inea maxima culpa, I 
rejoiced in common with all my fellow-creatvu^es ! I 
was ashamed of the feeling. I wished to ignore it 
and extinguish it ; but there was no doubt that it was 
there. And if Lord Newman was a person of en- 
larged and philosophic mind, he would have rejoiced 
that a small evil, which merely mortified himself and 
gave bad colds to his tenantry, afforded sensible plea- 
sure to several thousands of his fellow-men. Yes, 
my reader : it is well that a certain measure of small 
malice is ingrained in our fallen nature. For thus 
some pleasure comes out of almost all pain ; some 
good from almost all evil. Your little troubles vex 
you, but they gratify your friends. Your horse 
comes down and smashes his knees. No doubt, to 
you and your groom it is unmingled bitterness. But 
every man within several miles, whose horse's knees 
have already been smashed, hails the event as a real 
blessing to himself. You signally fail of getting into 



Tivo Blisters of Humanity. loi 

Parliament, though you stood for a county in which 
you fancied that your own influence and that of your 
connexions was all-powerful. No doubt, you are 
sadly mortified. No doubt, you do not look like 
yourself for several weeks. But what chuckles of 
joy pervade the hearts and faces of five hundred fel- 
lows who have no chance of getting into the House 
themselves, and who dislike you for your huge for- 
tune, your grand house, your countless thorough- 
breds, your insufferable dignity, and your general 
forgetfulness of the place where you grew, which by 
those around you is perfectly well remembered. And 
while it is true that even people of a tolerably bene- 
volent nature do not really feel any great regret at 
any mortification or disappointment which befals a 
wealthy and pretentious neighbour, it is also certain 
that a greater number of folk do actually gloat over 
any event which humbles the wealthy and pretentious 
man. You find them, with a malignant look, putting 
the case on a benevolent footing. ' This taking-down 
will do him a great deal of good : he will be much 
the wiser and better for it.' It is not uncharitable to 
believe, that in many cases in which such sentiments 
are expressed, the true feeling of the speaker is rather 
one of satisfaction at the pain which the disaj^point- 
ment certainly gives, than of satisfaction at the bene- 
ficial discipline which may possibly result from it. 



I02 Two Blisters of Humanity. 

The thing said amounts to this : ' I am glad that 
Mr. Richman has got a taking-down, because the 
taking-down, though painful at the time, is in fact a 
blessing.' The thing felt amounts to this : ' I am 
glad that Mr. Richman has got a taking-down, because 
I know it will make him veiy miserable.' Every one 
who reads this page knows that this is so. Ah, my 
malicious acquaintances, if you know that the senti- 
ment you entertain is one that would provoke universal 
execration if it were expressed, does not that shew 
that you ought not to entertain it % 

I have said that I do not believe there is much 
real malignity among ordinary men and women. It 
is only at the petty misfortunes of men's friends that 
they ever feel this unamiable satisfaction. When 
great sorrow befals a friend, all this unworthy feeling 
goes ; and the heart is filled with true sympathy and 
kindness. A man must be very bad indeed if this is 
not the case. It strikes me as something fiend-like 
rather than human, Byron's savage exultation over 
the melancholy end of the great and amiable Sir 
Samuel Romilly. Romilly had given him offence by 
acting as legal adviser to some whom Byron regarded 
as his enemies. But it was babyish to cherish enmity 
for such a cause as that ; and it was diabolical to 
rejoice at the sad close of that life of usefulness and 
honour. It was not good in James Watt, writing in 



Two Blisters of Hmnm^ity. 103 

old age an account of one of his many great inven- 
tions, to name very bitterly a man who had pirated 
it ; and to add, with a vengeful chuckle, that the 
poor man was ' afterwards hanged.' No private 
ground of offence should make you rejoice that your 
fellow-creature was hanged. You may justifiably re- 
joice in such a case only when the man hanged was a 
public offender, and an enemy of the race. Throw up 
your hat, if you please, when Nana Sahib stretches 
the hemp at last ! That is all right. He never did 
harm to you individually : but you think of Cawn- 
pore ; and it is quite fit that there should be a bitter, 
burning satisfaction felt at the condign punishment 
of one whose punishment eternal justice demands. 
AVhat is the use of the gallows, if not for that incarnate 
demon % I think of the poor sailors who were pre- 
sent at the trial of a bloodthirsty pirate of the Cuban 
coast. ' I suppose,' said the one doubtingly to the 
other, ' the devil will get that fellow.' ' I should 
hope so,' was the unhesitating reply ; ' or what would 
be the use of having any devil ! ' 

But some real mischievous malice there is, even 
among people who bear a creditable character. I 
have occasionally heard old ladies (very few) tearing 
up the character of a friend with looks as deadly as 
though their weapon had been a stiletto, instead of 
that less immediately fatal instrument of offence, con- 



1 04 Two Blisters of Humanity. 



cerning which a very high authority informs us, that 
in some cases it is ' set on fire of hell.' Ah, you poor 
girl, who danced three times (they call it nine) with 
Mr. A. at the Assembly last night, happily you do not 
know the venomous way in which certain spiteful 
tabbies are pitching into you this morning ! And you, 
my friend, who drove along Belvidere Place (the 
fashionable quarter of the county town) yesterday, in 
your new drag with the new harness and the pair of 
thoroughbreds, and fancied that you were chaniiing 
every eye and heart, if you could but hear how your 
equipage and yourself were scarified last evening, as 
several of your elderly female acquaintances sipped 
together the cup that cheers ! How they brought up 
the time that you were flogged at the public school, 
and the term you were rusticated at .Oxford ! Even 
the occasion was not forgotten on which your grand- 
father was believed, forty years since, to have rather 
done Mr. Softly in the matter of a glandered steed. 
And the peculiar theological tenets of your grand- 
mother were set forth in a fashion that would have 
astounded that good old lady. And you, who are so 
happily occupied in building in that beautiful wood- 
land spot that graceful Elizabethan house, little you 
know how bitterly some folk, dwelling in hideous 
seedy mansions, sneer at you, and your gimcracks, 
and your Gothic style in which you ' go back to bar- 



Two Blisters of Hjiinanity. 105 



barism.' You, too, my friend, lately made a Queen's 
counsel, or a judge, or a bishop, if the shafts of envy 
could kill you, you would not live long. It is curious, 
by the way, how detraction follows a man when he 
first attains to any eminent place in State or Church ; 
how keenly his qualifications are canvassed ; how 
loudly his unfitness for his situation is proclaimed ; 
and how, when a few months have passed, everybody 
gets quite reconciled to the appointment, and accepts 
it as one of the conditions of human affairs. Some- 
times, indeed, the right man, by emphasis, is put in 
the right place ; so unquestionably the right man that 
even envy is silenced : as when Lord St. Leonards was 
made Lord Chancellor, or when Mr. Melvill was ap- 
pointed to preach before the House of Commons. 
But even when men who have been plucked at the 
University were made bishops, or princes who had 
never seen a gun fired in anger field-marshals, or brief- 
less barristers judges, although a general outcry arose 
at the time, it very speedily died away. When you 
find a man actually in a place, you do not weigh his 
claims to be there so keenly as if you were about to 
appoint him to it. If a resolute premier made Tom 
Spring a chief-justice, I doubt not that in six weeks 
the country would be quite accustomed to the fict, 
and accept it as a part of the order of nature. How 
else is it that the nation is content to have blind and 



io6 Tivo Blisters of Humanity. 

deaf generals placed high in command, and infirm old 
admirals going to sea who ought to be going to bed % 

It is a sad fact that there are men and women who 
will, without much investigation as to its truth, repeat 
a story to the prejudice of some man or woman whom 
they know. They are much more critical in weighing 
the evidence in support of a tale to a friend's credit 
and advantage. I do not think they would absolutely 
invent such a calumnious narrative ; but they will re- 
peat, if it has been told them, what, if they do not 
know it to be false, they also do not know to be true, 
and strongly suspect to be false. 

My friend Mr. C, rector of a parish in Hampshire, 
has a living of about five hundred a-year. Some 
months ago he bought a horse for which he paid fifty 
pounds. Soon after he did so, I met a certain mali- 
cious woman who lived in his neighbourhood. ' So,' 
said she, with a look far from benevolent, ' Mr. C. has 
gone and paid a hundred pounds for a horse ! Mon- 
strous extravagance for a man with his means and 
with a family.' ' No, Miss Verjuice,' I replied : 
' Mr. C. did not pay nearly the sum you mention for 
his horse : he paid no more for it than a man of his 
means could afford.' Miss Verjuice was not in the 
least discomfited by the failure of her first shaft of 
petty malignity. She had another in her quiver which 
she instantly discharged. 'Well,' said she, with a 



Tivo Blisters of Hnnianity. 107 

face of deadly ferocity, ' if Mr. C. did not pay a hun- 
dred pounds for his horse, at all events he said he 
did !' This was the drop too much. I told Miss 
Verjuice, with considerable asperity, that my friend 
was incapable of petty vapouring and petty falsehood ; 
and in my book, from that day forward, there has stood 
a black cross against the individual's name. 

Egypt, it seems, is the country where malevolence, 
in the sense of pure envy of people who are better off, 
is most prevalent and is most feared. People there 
believe that the envious eye does harm to those on 
whom it rests. Thus, they are afraid to possess fine 
houses, furniture, and horses, lest they should excite 
envy and bring misfortune. And when they allow 
their children to go out for a walk, they send them 
dirty and ill-dressed, for fear the covetous eye should 
injure them : — 

At the bottom of this superstition is an enormous pre- 
valence of envy among the lower Egyptians. You see it 
in all their fictions. Half of the stories told in the coffee- 
shops by the professional story-tellers, of which the 
Arabian Niglits are a specimen, turn on malevolence. 
Malevolence, not attributed, as it would be in European 
fiction, to some insult or injury inflicted by the person 
who is its object, but to mere envy : envy of wealth, or of 
the other means of enjoyment, honourably acquired and 
liberally used.* 

* Archbishop Whately's Bacon, p. 97. 




EGYPTIAN WOMAN. 



A similar envy, no doubt, occasionally exists in this 
country ; but people here are too enlightened to fancy 
that it can do them any harm. Indeed, so far from 
standing in fear of exciting envy by their display of 
possessions and advantages, some people feel much 
gratified at the thought of the amount of envy and 
malignity which they are likely to excite. ' Won't old 
Hunks turn green with fury,' said a friend to me, ' the 



Tivo Blisters of Humanity. 1 09 

first time I drive up to his door with those horses % ' 
They were indeed beautifiil animals ; but their pro- 
prietor appeared to prize them less for the pleasure 
they afforded himself, than for the mortification they 
would inflict on certain of his neighbours. 'Won't 
Mrs. Grundy burst with spite when she sees this 
drawing-room 1 ' was the remark of my lately-married 
cousin Henrietta, when she shewed me that very 
pretty apartment for the first time. 'Won't Snooks 
be ferocious,' said Mr. Dryasdust the book-collector, 
'when he hears that I have got this almost unique 
edition 1 ' Ah, my fellow-creatures, we are indeed a 
fallen race ! 

Hazlitt maintains that the petty malignity of mortals 
finds its most striking field in the matter of will-making. 
He says — 

The last act of our lives seldom belies the former tenor 
of them for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All 
that we seem to think of is to manage matters so (in 
settling accounts with those who are so immannerly as to 
survive us) as to do as little good and plague and disap- 
point as many people as possible.* 

Every one knows that this brilliant essayist was 
accustomed to deal in sweeping assertions ; and it is 
to be hoped that such cases as that which he here 
describes form the exception to the rule. But it must 

* Table-Talk, vnl. i, p. 171. Essay rm Will-making, 



1 10 Two Blisters of Humanity. 

be admitted that most of us have heard of wills at 
whose reading we might almost imagine their mali- 
cious maker fancied he might be invisibly present to 
chuckle over the disappointment and mortification 
which he was dealing even from his grave. Cases are 
also recorded in which rich old bachelors have played 
upon the hopes of half-a-dozen poor relations, by 
dropping hints to each separately that he was to be 
the fortunate heir of all their wealth ; and then have 
left their fortune to an hospital, or have departed from 
this world intestate, leaving an inheritance mainly of 
quarrels, heart-burnings, and Chancery suits. How 
often the cringing, tale-bearing toady, who has borne 
the ill-humours of a rich sour old maid for thirty 
years, in the hope of a legacy, is cut off with nineteen 
guineas for a mourning ring ! You would say perhaps, 
' Serve her right' I differ from you. If any one likes 
to be toadied, he ought in honesty to pay for it. He 
knows quite well he would never have got it save for 
the hope of payment ; and you have no more right to 
swindle some poor creature out of years of cringing 
and flattering than out of pounds of money. A very 
odd case of petty malice in will-making was that of a 
man who, not having a penny in this world, left a will 
in which he bequeathed to his friends and acquaint- 
ance large estates in various parts of England, money 
in the funds, rings, jewels, and plate. His inducement 



Tivo Blisters of Himianity. 1 1 1 

was the prospect of the dehght of his friends at first 
learning about the rich possessions which were to be 
theirs, and then the bitter disappointment at finding 
how they had been hoaxed. Such deceptions and 
hoaxes are very cruel. Who does not feel for poor 
Moore and his wife, receiving a lawyer's letter just at 
a season of special embarrassment, to say that some 
deceased admirer of the poet had left him five hundred 
pounds, and after being buoyed up with hope for a 
few days, finding that some malicious rascal had been 
playing upon them % No ; poor people know that 
want of money is too serious a matter to be joked 
about. 

Let me conclude what I have to say about petty 
malignity by observing that I am very far from main- 
taining that all unfavourable remark about people you 
know proceeds from this unamiable motive. Some 
folk appear to fancy that if you speak of any man in 
any temis but those of superlative praise, this must 
be because you bear him some ill-will ; they cannot 
understand that you may merely wish to speak truth 
and do justice. Every person who writes a stupid 
book and finds it unfavourably noticed in any review, 
instantly concludes that the reviewer must be actuated 
by some petty spite. The author entirely overlooks 
the alternative that his book may be said to be bad 
because it is bad, and because it is the reviewer's duty 



1 1 2 T%vo Blisters of Humanity. 

to say so if he thinks so. I remember to have heard 
the friend of a lady who had published a bitterly bad 
and unbecoming work speaking of the notice of it 
which had appeared in a periodical of the very highest 
class. The notice was of course unfavourable. ' Oh,' 
said the writer's friend, ' I know why the review was 
so disgraceful ; the man who wrote it was lately jilted, 
and he hates all women in consequence ! ' It hap- 
pened that I had very good reason to know who wrote 
the depreciatory article, and I could declare that the 
motive assigned to the reviewer had not the least 
existence in fact. 

Unfavourable remark has frequently no earthly con- 
nexion with malignity, great or petty. It is quite fit 
that as in people's presence politeness requires that 
you should not say what you think of them, you should 
have an opportunity of doing so in their absence ; and 
every one feels when the limits of fair criticism are 
passed. What could you do if, after listening with 
every appearance of interest to some old lady's weari- 
some vapouring, you felt bound to pretend, after you 
had made your escape, that you thought her conversa- 
tion was exceedingly interesting % What a relief it is 
to tell what you have suffered to some sympathetic 
friend ! I have heard injudicious people say, as some- 
thing much to a man's credit, that he never speaks of 
any mortal except in his praise. I do not think the 



Tzvo Blisters of Hmnmiity. 1 1 3 

fact is to the man's advantage. It appears to prove 
either that the man is so silly that he thinks every- 
thing he hears and sees to be good, or that he is 
so crafty and reserved that he will not commit himself 
by saying what he thinks. Outspoken good-nature 
will sometimes get into scrapes from which self-con- 
tained craft will keep free ; but the man who, to use 
Miss Edgeworth's phrase, ' thinks it best in general 
not to speak of things,' will be liked by nobody. 

By petty trickery I mean that small deception which 
annoys and worries you without doing you material 
harm. Thus it passes petty trickery when a bank 
publishes a swindling report, on the strength of whose 
false representations of prosperity you invest your 
hard-won savings in its stock and lose them all. It 
passes petty trickery when your clerk absconds with 
some hundreds of pounds. It indicates petty trickery 
when you find your servants writing their letters on 
your crested note-paper, and enclosing them in your 
crested envelopes. It indicates that at some time or 
other a successful raid has been made upon your 
paper-drawer. It indicates petty trickery when you 
find your horses' ribs beginning to be conspicuous, 
though they are only half worked, and are allowed 
three feeds of corn a-day. Observe your coachman, 
then, my friend. Some of your corn is going where 
I 



1 14 Tivo Blisters of Humanity. 

it should not. It indicates petty trickery when your 
horses' coats are full of dust, though whenever you 
happen to be present they are groomed with incredible 
vigour : they are not so in your absence. It indicates 
petty trickery when, suddenly turning a corner, you 
find your coachman galloping the horses along the 
turnpike-road at the rate of twenty-three miles an 
hour. It indicates petty trickery when you find your 
neighbours' cows among your clover. It indicates 
petty trickery when you find amid a cottager's stock 
of firewood several palisades taken from your park- 
fence. It indicates petty trickery when you discern 
in the morning the traces of very large hobnailed shoes 
crossing your wife's flower garden towards the tree 
wliere the magnum bonums are nearly ripe. But why 
extend the catalogue? Every man can add to it a 
hundred instances. Says Bacon, ' The small wares 
and petty points of cunning are infinite, and it were a 
good deed to make a list of them.' Who could make 
such a list % What numbers of people are practising 
petty trickery at every hour of the day ! Yet, foras- 
much as these tricks are small and pretty frequently 
seen through, they form only a blister : they are irri- 
tating but not dangerous : and it is very irritating to 
know that you have been cheated, to however small 
an extent. How inestimable is a thoroughly honest 
servant ! Apart from anything like principle, if ser- 



Ttvo Blisters of Humanity. 1 1 5 

vants did but know it, it is well worth their while to 
be strictly truthful and reliable : they are then valued 
so much. It is highly expedient, besides being right. 
And not only is it extremely vexatious to find out any 
domestic in dishonesty of any kind, not only does it 
act as a blister at the moment, but it fosters in one's 
self a suspicious habit of mind which has in it some- 
thing degrading. It is painful to be obliged to feel 
that you must keep a strict watch upon your stable or 
your granary. You have somewhat of the feeling of 
a spy ; yet you cannot, if you have ordinary powers 
of observation, shut your eyes to what passes round 
you. 

There is, indeed, some petty trickery which is 
highly venial, not to say pleasing. When a little 
child, on being offered a third plate of plum-pudding, 
says, with a wistful and half-ashamed look, 'No, 
thank you,' well you know that the statement is not 
entirely candid, and that the poor little thing would 
be sadly disappointed if you took him at his word. 
Think of your own childish days ; think what plum- 
pudding was then, and instantly send the little man a 
third plate, larger than the previous two. So if your 
gardener gets wet to the skin in mowing a little bit of 
turf, in a drenching summer shower, which turns it, 
parched for the last fortnight, to emerald green, tell 
him he must be very wet, and give him a glass of 




AT HEK SFINNING-UHEEL. 



whisky ; never mind though he, in his pohteness, de- 
clares that he does not want the whisky, and is per- 
fectly dry and comfortable. You will find him very 
readily dispose of the proffered refreshment. So if 
you go into a poor, but spotlessly-clean little cottage, 
where a lonely widow of eighty sits by her spinning- 
wheel. Her husband and her children are dead, and 
there she is, all alone, waiting till she goes to rejoin 
them. A poor, dog's-eared, ill-printed Bible lies on 
the rickety deal-table near. You take a large parcel 
which you have brought, wrapped in brown paper ; 
and as you talk with the good old Christian, you 
gradually untie it. A well-sized volume appears ; it is 



T%vo Blisters of Humanity. 1 1 7 

the Volume which is worth all the rest that ever were 
written ; and you tell your aged friend that you have 
brought her a Bible, with great, clear type, which will 
be easily read by her failing eyes, and you ask her to 
accept it. You see the flush of joy and gratitude on 
her face, and you do not mind though she says some- 
thing which is not strictly true — that it was too kind of 
you, that she did not need it, that she could manage 
with the old one yet. Nor would you severely blame 
the brave fellow who jumped off a bridge forty feet 
high, and pulled out your brother when he was just 
sinking in a flooded river, if, when you thanked him 
with a full heart for the risk he had run, he replied, in a 
careless, good-humoured way, that he had really done 
nothing worth the speaking of The brave man is 
pained by your thanks : but he thought of his wife and 
children when he leaped from the parapet, and he 
knew well that he was hazarding his life. And he is 
perfectly aware that the statement which he makes is 
not consistent with fact — but surely you would never 
call him a trickster ! 

Mr. J. S. Mill, unquestionably a very courageous as 
well as a very able writer, has declared in a recent 
publication, that, in Great Britain, the higher classes, 
for the most part, speak the truth, while the lower 
classes, almost without exception, have frequent re- 
course to falsehood. I think Mr. Mill must have 




EVENING. 



been unfortunate in his experience of the poor. I 
have seen much of them, and I have found among 
them much honesty and truthfulness, along with great 
kindness of heart. They have little to give away in 
the form of money, but will cheerfully give their time 
and strength in the service of a sick neighbour. I 
have known a shepherd who had come in from the 
hills in the twilight of a cold December afternoon, 
weary and worn out, find that the little child of a poor 
widow in the next cottage had suddenly been taken 
ill, and without sitting down, take his stick, and walk 
away through the dark to the town nine miles off, to 
fetch the doctor. And when I told the fine fellow 
how much I respected his manly kindness, I found he 
was quite unaware that he had done anything remark- 



Two Blisters of Hmimiiify. 



1 19 



able ; ' it was just what ony neibour wad do for 
anither ! ' And I could mention scores of similar 
cases. And as for truthfulness, I have known men 
and women among the peasantry, both of England 
and Scotland, whom I would have trusted with untold 
gold, — or even with what the Highland laird thought 
a more searching test of rectitude — with unmeasured 
whisky. Still I must sorrowfully admit that I have 
found in many people a strong tendency, when they 
had done anything wrong, to justify themselves by 
falsehood. It is not impossible that over-severe 
masters and mistresses, by undue scoldings adminis- 
tered for faults of no great moment, foster this un- 
happy tendency. It was not, however, of one class 
more than another that the quaint old minister of a 
parish in Lanarkshire was speaking, when one Sunday 
morning he read as his text the verse in the Psalms, 
' I said in my haste, All men are liars,' and began his 
sermon by thoughtfully saying — 

'Ay, David, ye said it in your haste, did you? If 
ye had lived in this parish, ye might have said it at 
your leisure ! ' 



There is hardly a sadder manifestation of the spirit 
of petty trickery than that which has been pressed on 
the attention of the public by recent accounts of the 
adulteration of food. It is, indeed, sad enough. 



1 20 Two Blisters of Hmnanity. 

When chalk, and alum, and plaster, are sold to the poor 

for bread. 
And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life : 

and when the luxuries of the rich are in many cases 
quite as much tampered with ; while, when medical 
appliances become needful to correct the evil effects 
of red-lead, plaster of Paris, cantharides, and oil of 
vitriol, the physician is quite uncertain as to the prac- 
tical power of the medicine he prescribes, inasmuch 
as drugs are as much adulterated as food. Still, there 
seems reason to hope that, more frequently than the 
Lancet Commission would lead one to think, you 
really get in the shops the thing you ask and pay for. 
I firmly believe that, in this remote district of the 
world, such petty dishonesty is unknown : and I can- 
not refrain from saying that, notwithstanding all I 
have read of late years in tracts, sermons, poems, and 
leading articles, of the frequency of fraud in the deal- 
ings of tradesmen in towns, I never in my own ex- 
perience have seen the least trace of it. 

Most human beings, however, will tell you that day 
by day they witness a good deal of indirectness, in- 
sincerity, and want of straightforwardness — in fact, 
of petty trickery. There are many people who ap- 
pear incapable of doing anything without going round 
about the bush, as Caledonians say. There are many 
people who always try to disguise the real motive 



Tivo Blisters of Humanity. 121 

for what they do. They will tell you of anything 
but the consideration that actually weighs with 
them, though that is in most cases perfectly well 
known to the person they are talking to. Some men 
will tell you that they travel second-class by railway 
because it is wanner, cooler, airier, pleasanter than 
the first-class. They suppress all mention of the con- 
sideration that obviously weighs with them, viz., that 
it is cheaper. Mr. Squeers gave the boys at Dothe- 
boys Hall treacle and sulphur one morning in the 
week. The reason he assigned was that it was good 
for their health : but his more outspoken wife stated 
the true reason, which was that, by sickening the 
children, it made breakfast unnecessary upon that 
day. Some Dissenters pretend that they want to 
abolish Church-rates, with a view to the good of the 
Church : of course everybody knows that their real 
wish is to do the Church harm. Very soft indeed 
would the members of the Church be, if they believed 
that its avowed enemies are extremely anxious for 
its welfare. But the forms of petty trickery are end- 
less. Bacon mentions in one of his Essays that he 
knew a statesman who, when he came to Queen 
Elizabeth with bills to sign, always engaged her in 
conversation about something else, to distract her 
attention from the papers she was signing. And 
when some impudent acquaintance asks you, reader. 



122 Two Blisters of Hinnanity. 

to put your name to another kind of bill, for his ad- 
vantage, does he not always think to delude you into 
doing so by saying that your signing is a mere form, 
intended only for the fuller satisfaction of the bank 
that is to lend him the money % He does not tell 
you that he is just asking you to give him the sum 
named on that stamped paper. Don't believe a word 
he says, and show him the door. Signing a promise 
to pay money is never a form ; if it be a form, why 
does he ask you to do it % Bacon mentions another 
man, who, ' when he came to have speech, would 
pass over that he intended most, and go forth, and 
come back again, and speak of it as a thing he had 
almost forgot.' I have known such men too. We 
have all known men who would come and talk about 
many indifferent things, and then at the end bring in, 
as if accidentally, the thing they came for. Always 
pull such men sharply up. Let them understand that 
you see through them. When they sit down, and 
begin to talk of the weather, the affairs of the district, 
the new railway, and so forth, say at once, ' Now, Mr. 
Pawky, I know you did not come to talk to me about 
these things. What is it that you want to speak of? 
I am busy, and have no time to waste.' It is wonder- 
ful how this will beat down Mr. Pawky's guard. 
He is prepared for sly finesse, but he is quite taken 
aback by downright honesty. If you try to do him, 



Two Blisters of Humanity. 123 

he will easily do you : but perfect candour foils the 
crafty man, as the sturdy Highlander's broadsword at 
once cut down the French master of fence, vapouring 
away with his rapier. You cannot beat a rogue with 
his own weapons. Try him with truth : like David, 
he ' has not proved ' that armour ; he is quite un- 
accustomed to it, and he goes down. 

Men in towns know that time is valuable to them, 
and by long experience they are assured that there 
is no use in trying to overreach a neighbour in a bar- 
gain, because he is so sharp that they will not succeed. 
But in agricultural districts some persons may be 
found who appear to regard it as a fond delusion that 
' honesty is the best policy ; ' and who never deal with 
a stranger without feeling their way, and trying how 
far it may be possible to cheat him. I am glad to 
infer, from the universal contempt in which such per- 
sons are held, that they form base, though by no 
means infrequent, exceptions to the general rule. 
The course which such individuals follow in buying 
and selling is quite marked and invariable. If they 
wish to buy a cow or rent a field, they begin by de- 
claring with frequency and vehemence that they don't 
j want the thing, — that, in fact, they would rather not 
! have it, — that it would be inconvenient for them to 
i become possessors of it. They then go on to say that 
! still, if they can get it at a fair price, they may be in- 



124 Tivo Blisters of Humajiity. 

duced to think of it. They next declare that the cow 
is the very worst that ever was seen, and that very 
few men would have such a creature in their posses- 
sion. The seller of the cow, if he knows his customer, 
meanwhile listens with entire indifference to Mr. 
Pawky's asseverations, and after a while proceeds to 
name his price. Fifteen pounds for the cow. ' Oh,' 
says Mr. Pawky, getting up hastily and putting on his 
hat, ' I see you don't want to sell it. I was just going 
to have offered you five pounds. I see I need not 
spend longer time here.' Mr. Pawky, however, does 
not leave the room : sometimes, indeed, if dealing 
with a green hand, he may actually depart for half-an- 
hour ; but then he returns and resumes the negotia- 
tion. A friend of his has told him that possibly the 
cow was better than it looked. It looked very bad 
indeed ; but it might be a fair cow after all. So the 
proceedings go on : and after an hour's haggling, and 
several scores of falsehoods told by Mr. Pawky, he 
becomes the purchaser of the animal for the sum 
originally named. Even now he is not exhausted. 
He assures the former owner of the cow that it is the 
custom of the district always to give back half-a-crown 
in the pound, and refuses to hand over more than 
^13 2s. 6d. The cow is by this time on its way to 
Mr. Pawky's farm. If dealing with a soft man, this 
final trick possibly succeeds. If with an experienced 



Two Blisters of Humanity. 125 

person, it wholly fails. And Mr. Pawky, after wasting 
two hours, telling sixty-five lies, and stamping himself 
as a cheat in the estimation of the person with whom 
he was dealing, ends by taking nothing by all his 
petty trickery. Oh, poor Pawky ! why not be honest 
and straightforward at once % You would get just as 
much money, in five cases out of six ; and you would 
save your time and breath, and miss running up that 
fearful score in the book of the recording angel ! 

After any transaction with Mr. Pawky, how delightful 
it is to meet with a downright honest man ! I know 
several men — farmers, labourers, country gentlemen — 
of that noble class, whose ' word is as good as their 
bond ! ' I know men whom you could not even ima- 
gine as taking a petty advantage of any mortal. They 
are probably far from being pieces of perfection. They 
are crotchety in temper ; they are rough in address ; 
their clothes were never made by Stultz ; possibly they 
do not shave every morning. But as I look at the 
open, manly face, and feel the strong gripe of the 
vigorous hand, and rejoice to think that the world goes 
well with them, and that they find it pay to speak the 
truth, I feel for the minute as if the somewhat over- 
strained sentiment had truth in it, that 

An honest man 's the noblest work of God ! 
I am firmly convinced that no man, in the long 



1 26 Tivo Blisters of Htmianity. 

run, gains by petty trickery. Honesty is the best 
policy. You remember how the roguish Ephraim 
Jenkinson, in the Vicar of Wakefield^ mentioned that 
he contrived to cheat honest Farmer Flamborough 
about once a-year; but still the honest farmer grew 
rich, and the rogue grew poor, and so Jenkinson began 
to bethink him that he was in the wrong track after all. 
A man who with many oaths declares a broken-winded 
nag is sound as a bell, and thus gets fifty pounds for 
an animal he bought for ten, and then declares with 
many more oaths that he never warranted the horse, 
may indeed gain forty pounds in money by that trans- 
action, but he loses much more than he gains. The 
man whom he cheated, and the friends of the man 
whom he cheated, will never trust him again ; and he 
soon acquires such a character that every one who is 
compelled to have any dealings with him stands on his 
guard, and does not believe a syllable he says. I do 
not mention here the solemn consideration of how the 
gain and loss may be adjusted in the view of another 
world ; nor do more than allude to a certain solemn 
question as to the profit which would follow the gain 
of much more than forty pounds, by means which 
would damage something possessed by every man. 
All trickery is folly. Every rogue is a fool. The 
publisher who advertises a book he has brought out, 
and appends a flattering criticism of it as from the 



Tzvo Blisters of Humanity. 127 

Times or Eraser's Magazine which never appeared in 
either periodical, does not gain on the whole by such 
petty deception ; neither does the publisher who ap- 
pends highly recommendatory notices, marked with 
inverted commas as quotations, though with the name 
of no periodical attached, the fact being that he com- 
posed these notices himself. You will say that Mr. 
Barnum is an instance of a man who made a large 
fortune by the greater and lesser arts of trickery ; but 
would you, my honest and honourable friend, have 
taken that fortune on the same terms % I hope not. 
And no blessing seems to have rested on Barnum's 
gains. Where are they now? The trickster has 
been tricked — the doer done. There is a hoUow- 
ness about all prosperity Avhich is the result of unfair 
and underhand means. Even if a man who has 
grown rich through trickery seems to be going on 
quite comfortably, depend upon it he cannot feel 
happy. The sword of Damocles is hanging over 
his head. Let no man be called happy before he 
dies. 

I believe, indeed, that in some cases the conscience 
grows quite callous, and the notorious cheat fancies 
himself a highly moral and religious man ; and al- 
though it is always extremely irritating to be cheated, 
it is more irritating than usual to think that the man 
who has cheated you is not even made uneasy by the 



128 



Two Blisters of Humanity. 



checks of his own conscience. I would gladly think 
that in most cases, 

Doubtless the pleasure is as great 
Of beingr cheated as to cheat. 



I would gladly think that the man who has done 
another feels it as blistering to remember the fact as 
the man who has been done does. It would gratify 
me much if I were able to conclude that every man 
who is a knave knows that he is one. I doubt it. 
Probably he merely thinks himself a sharp, clever 
fellow. Only this morning I was cheated out of four 
and sixpence by a man of very decent appearance. 
He obtained that sum by making three statements, 
which I found on inquiring, after he had gone, were 
false. The gain, you see, was small. He obtained 
just eighteenpence a lie. Yet he Avent off, looking 
extremely honest. And no doubt he will be at his 
parish church next Sunday, shaking his head sympa- 
thetically at the more solemn parts of the sermon. 
And probably when he reflects upon the transaction, 
he merely thinks that he was sharp and I was soft. 
The analogy between these small tricks and a blister 
holds in several respects. Each is irritating, and the 
irritation caused by each gradually departs. You are 
very indignant at first learning that you have been 
taken in ; you are rather sore, even the day after — but 



Tzvo Blisters of Humanity. 129 

the day after that you are less sore at having been 
done than sorry for the rogue who was fool enough to 
do you. 

I am writing only of that petty trickery which acts 
as a blister of humanity ; as I need say nothing of 
those numerous forms of petty trickery which do not 
irritate, but merely amuse. Such are those silly arts 
by which some people try to represent themselves to 
their fellow-creatures as richer, wiser, better-informed, 
more highly connected, more influential, and more 
successful than the fact. I felt no irritation at the 
schoolboy who sat opposite me the other day in a 
railway carriage, and pretended that he was reading 
a Greek play. I allowed him to fancy his trick had 
succeeded, and conversed with him of the character- 
istics of yEschylus. He did not know much about 
them. A friend of mine, a clergyman, went to the 
house of a weaver in his parish. As he was about to 
knock at the door, he heard a solemn voice within ; 
and he listened in silence as the weaver asked God's 
blessing upon his food. Then he lifted the latch and 
entered : and thereupon the weaver, resolved that the 
clergyman should know he said grace before meat, 
began and repeated his grace over again. My friend 
was not angry; but he was very, very sorry. And 
never, till the man had been years in his grave, did he 
mention the fact. As for the fashion in which some 

K 



130 Two Blister's of Huinmiity. 

people fire off, in conversation with a new acquaint- 
ance, every titled name they know, it is to be recorded 
that the trick is invariably as unsuccessful as it is 
contemptible. And is not a state dinner, given by 
poor people, in resolute imitation of people with five 
times their income, with its sham champagne, its dis- 
guised greengrocers, and its general turning the house 
topsy-turvy,^ — is not such a dinner one great trick, and 
a very transparent one ? 

The writer is extremely tired. Is it not curious 
that to write for four or five hours a day for four or 
five successive days, wearies a man to a degree that 
ten or twelve daily hours of ploughing does not weary 
the man whose work is physical? Mental work is 
much the greater stretch : and it is strain, not time, 
that kills. A horse that walks at two miles and a-half 
an hour, ploughing, will work twelve hours out of the 
twenty-four. A horse that nms in the mail at twelve 
miles an hour, works an hour and a-half and rests 
twenty-two and a-half; and with all that rest soon 
breaks down. The bearing of all this is that it is 
time to stop ; and so, my long black goosequill, lie 
down ! 




ROUTING f.RIG. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CONCERNING WORK AND PLAY. 

NOBODY likes to work. I should never work at 
all if I could help it. I mean, when I say that 
nobody likes work, that nobody does so whose tastes 
and likings are in a natural and unsophisticated con- 



132 Work and Play. 

dition. Some men, by long training and by the force 
of various circumstances, do, I am aware, come to 
have an actual craving, a morbid appetite for work ; 
but it is a morbid appetite, just as truly as that which 
impels a lady to eat chalk, or a child to prefer pickles 
to sugar-plums. Or if my reader quarrels with the 
word 7norlndj and insists that a liking for brisk, hard 
work is a healthy taste and not a diseased one, I will 
give up that phrase, and substitute for it the less strong 
one, that a liking for work is an acquired taste, like that 
which leads you and me, my friend, to like bitter beer. 
Such a man, for instance, as Lord Campbell, has 
brought himself to that state that I have no doubt he 
actually enjoys the thought of the enormous quantity 
of work which he goes through ; but when he does so, 
he does a thing as completely out of nature as is done 
by the Indian fakir, who feels a gloomy satisfaction as 
he reflects on the success with which he has laboured 
to weed out all but bitterness from life. I know quite 
well that we can bring ourselves to such a state of 
mind that we shall feel a sad sort of pleasure in think- 
ing how much we are taking out of ourselves, and how 
much we are denying ourselves. What college man 
who ever worked himself to death but knows well the 
curious condition of mind % He begins to toil, induced 
by the love of knowledge, or by the desire of distinc- 
tion ; but after he has toiled on for some weeks or 



Work and Play. 133 

months, there generally steals in such a feehng as that 
which I have been describing. I have felt it myself, 
and so know all about it. I do not believe that any 
student ever worked harder than I did. And I re- 
member well the gloomy kind of satisfaction I used to 
feel, as all day, and much of the night, I bent over my 
books, in thinking how much I was foregoing. The 
sky never seemed so blue and so inviting as when I 
looked at it for a moment now and then, and so back 
to the weary page. And never did the green wood- 
land walks picture themselves to my mind so freshly 
and delightfully as when I thought of them as of 
something which I was resolutely denying myself I 
remember even now, when I went to bed at half-past 
four in the morning, having risen at half-past six the 
previous morning, and having done nearly as much 
for months, how I was positively pleased to see in the 
glass the ghastly cheeks, and the deep black circles 
round the eyes. There is, I repeat, a certain pleasure 
in thinking one is working desperately hard, and 
taking a great deal out of one's-self ; but it is a pleasure 
which is unnatural, which is factitious, which is mor- 
bid. It is not in the healthy, unsophisticated human 
animal. We know, of course, that Lord Chief- 
Justice EUenborough said, when he was about 
seventy, that the greatest pleasure that remained to 
him in life was to hear a young barrister, named 



1 34 Work and Play. 

FoUett, argue a point of law ; but it was a highly 
artificial state of mind, the result of very long train- 
ing, which enabled the eminent judge to enjoy the 
gratification which he described : and to ordinary 
men a legal argument, however ably conducted, would 
be sickeningly tiresome. If you want to know the 
natural feeling of humanity towards work, see what 
children think of it. Is not the task always a dis- 
agreeable necessity, even to the very best boy % How 
I used to hate mine ! Of course, my friendly reader, 
if you knew who I am, I should talk of myself less 
freely ; but as you do not know, and could not pos- 
sibly guess, I may ostensibly do what every man 
tacitly does — make myself the standard of average 
human nature, the first meridian from which all dis- 
tances and deflections are to be measured. Well, my 
feeling towards my school tasks was nothing short of 
hatred. And yet I was not a dunce. No, I was a clever 
boy. I was at the head of all my classes. Not more 
than once or twice have I competed at school or college 
for a prize which I did not get. And I hated work 
all the while. Therefore I believe that all unsophisti- 
cated mortals hate it. I have seen silly parents trying 
to get their children to say that they hked school-time 
better than holiday-time ; that they liked work better 
than play. I have seen, with joy, manly little fellows 
repudiating the odious and unnatural sentiment ; and 



Work and Play. 135 

declaring manfully that they prefer cricket to Ovid, 
And if any boy ever tells you that he would rather learn 
his lessons than go out to the play-ground, beware of 
that boy. Either his health is drooping, and his mind 
becoming prematurely and unnaturally developed ; or 
he is a little humbug. He is an impostor. He is 
seeking to obtain credit under false pretences. Depend 
upon it, unless it really be that he is a poor little 
spiritless man, deficient in nerve and muscle, and un- 
healthily precocious in intellect, he has in him the 
elements of a sneak ; and he wants nothing but time 
to ripen him into a pickpocket, a swindler, a horse- 
dealer, or a British Bank director. 

Every one, then, naturally hates work, and loves its 
opposite, play. And let it be remarked that not 
idleness, but play, is the opposite of work. But some 
people are so happy, as to be able to idealise their 
work into play : or they have so great a liking for 
their work, that they do not feel their work as effort, 
and thus the element is eliminated which makes work 
a pain. How I envy those human beings who have 
such enjoyment in their work that it ceases to be work 
at all ! There is my friend Mr. Tinto the painter ; he 
is never so happy as when he is busy at his canvas, 
drawing forth from it forms of beauty : he is up at his 
work almost as soon as he has daylight for it; he 
paints all day, and he is sorry when the twilight com- 



136 



Work and Play. 



pels him to stop. He delights in his work, and so 
his work becomes play. I suppose the kind of work 
which, in the case of ordinary men, never ceases to 
be work, never loses the conscious feeling of strain 
and effort, is that of composition. A great poet, 
possibly, may find much pleasure in writing ; and there 
have been exceptional men who said they never were 
so happy as when they had the pen in their hand. 
Buffon, I think, tells us that once he wrote for fourteen 
hours at a stretch, and all that time was in a state of 
positive enjoyment ; and Lord Macaulay, in the pre- 
face to his recently published Speeches, assures us that 
the writing of his History is the occupation and the 
happiness of his life. Well, I am glad to hear it. 
Ordinary mortals cannot sympathise with the feeling. 
To them, composition is simply hard work, and hard 
work is pain. Of course, even commonplace men 
have occasionally had their moments of inspiration, 
when thoughts present themselves vividly, and clothe 
themselves in felicitous expressions, without much or 
any conscious effort. But these seasons are short and 
far between ; and although, while they last, it becomes 
comparatively pleasant to write, it never becomes so 
pleasant as it would be to lay down the pen, to lean 
back in the easy-chair, to take up the Times or Fraser, 
and enjoy the luxury of being carried easily along that 
track of thought which cost its writer so much labour 



Work and Play. 137 

to pioneer through the trackless jungle of the world of 
mind. Ah, how easy it is to read what it was so difili- 
cult to write ! There is all the difference between 
running down from London to Manchester by the 
railway after it has been made, and of making the 
railway from London to Manchester. You, my in- 
telligent reader, who begin to read a chapter of Mr. 
Froude's eloquent History^ and get on with it so 
fluently, are like the snug old gentleman, travelling- 
capped, railway-rugged, great-coated, and plaided, who 
leans back in the comer of the softly-cushioned car- 
riage as it flits over Chat Moss ; while the writer of 
the chapter is like George Stephenson, toiling month 
after month to make the track along which you 
speed, in the face of difficulties and discouragements 
which you never think of And so I say, it may some- 
times be somewhat easy and pleasant to write, but 
never so easy and pleasant as it is not to wiite. 
The odd thing, too, about the work of the pen is this : 
that it is often done best by the men who like it least 
and shrink from it most, and that it is often the most 
laborious writing along which the reader's mind glides 
most easily and pleasurably. It is not so in other 
matters. As the general rule, no man does well the 
work which he dislikes. No man will be a good 
preacher who dislikes preaching. No man will be a 
good anatomist who hates dissecting. Sir Charles 



138 Work and Play. 

Napier, it must be confessed, was a great soldier, 
though he hated fighting ; and as for writing, some 
men have been the best writers who hated writing, 
and who would never have penned a line but under 
the pressure of necessity. There is John Foster; 
what a great writer he was : and yet his biography 
tells us, in his own words too, scores of times, how 
he shrunk away from the intense mental effort of 
composition ; how he abhorred it and dreaded it, 
though he did it so admirably well. There is 
Coleridge : how that great mind ran to waste, 
because Coleridge shrank from the painful labour 
of formal composition : and so Christahcl must re- 
main unfinished : and so, instead of volumes of 
hoarded wisdom and wit, we have but the fading 
remembrances of hours of marvellous talk, I do not 
by any means intend to assert that there are not worse 
things than work, even than very hard work ; but I 
say that work, as work, is a bad thing. It may once 
have been otherwise, but the curse is in it now. We 
do it because we must : it is our duty : we live by it ; 
it is the Creator's intention that we should ; it makes 
us enjoy leisure and recreation and rest ; it stands 
between us and the pure misery of idleness ; it is 
dignified and honourable ; it is the soil and the at- 
mosphere in which grow cheerfulness, hopefulness, 
health of body and mind. But still, if we could get 



Work and Play. 139 

all these good ends without it, we should be glad. 
We do not care for exertion for its own sake. Even 
Mr. Kingsley does not love the north-east wind for 
itself, but because of the good things that come with 
it and from it. Work is not an end in itself. ' The 
end of work,' said Aristotle, 'is to enjoy leisure;' 
or, as The Minstrel hath it, ' the end and the reward 
of toil is rest.' I do not wish to draw from too sacred 
a source the confirmation of these summer-day fancies ; 
but I think, as I write, of the descriptions which we 
find in a certain Volume of the happiness of another 
world. Has not many an over-wrought and wearied- 
out worker found comfort in an assurance of which I 
shall here speak no further, ' that ' there remaineth a 
rest to the people of God ' % 

And so, my reader, if it be true that nobody, any- 
where, would (in his sober senses) work if he could 
help it, how especially true is that great principle on 
this beautiful July day ! It is truly a day on which to 
do nothing. I am here, far in the country ; and when 
I this moment went to the window, and looked out 
upon a rich summer landscape, everything seemed 
asleep. The sky is sapphire-blue, without a cloud ; 
the sun is pouring down a flood of splendour upon all 
things ; there is not a breath stirring, hardly the twitter 
of a bird. All the air is filled with the fragrance of 
the young clover. The landscape is richly wooded ; 



140 Woi'k and Play. 

I never saw the trees more thickly covered with leaves, 
and now they are perfectly still, I am writing north 
of the Tweed, and the horizon is of blue hills, which 
some Southrons would call mountains. The wheat 
fields are beginning to have a little of the harvest-tinge, 
and they contrast beautifully with the deep green of 
the hedge-rows. The roses are almost over, but I can 
see plenty of honeysuckle in the hedges still, and a 
perfect blaze of it has covered one projecting branch 
of a young oak. I am looking at a little well-shaven 
green (I shall not call it a lawn, because it is not one) ; 
it has not been mown for nearly a fortnight, and it is 
perfectly white with daisies. Beyond, at a very short 
distance, through the branches of many oaks, I can 
see a gable of the church, and a few large gravestones 
shining white among the green grass and leaves. I 
do not find all these things any great temptation now, 
for I have got interested in my work, and I like to 
write of them. But I found it uncommonly hard to 
sit down this morning to my work. Indeed, I found 
it impossible, and thus it is that at five o'clock p.m. I 
have got no further than the present line. I had quite 
resolved that this morning I would sit doggedly down 
to my essay, in which I have really (though the reader 
may find it hard to believe it) got something to say ; 
but when I walked out after breakfast, I felt that all 
nature was saying that this was not a day for work. 



Work and Play. 141 

Come forth and look at me, seemed the message 
breathed from lier beautiful fice. And then I thought 
of Wordsworth's ballad, which sets out so pleasing an 
excuse for idleness : — 

Books ! 'tis a dull and endless strife, 
Come, hear the woodland linnet ! 

How sweet his music ! on my life 
There 's more of wisdom in it. 

And hark ! how blithe the throstle sings ! 

He, too, is no mean preacher : 
Come forth into the light of things. 

Let Nature be your teacher. 

She has a world of ready wealth, 
Our minds and hearts to bless, — 

Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, 
Truth breathed by cheerfulness. 

One impulse from a vernal wood 

May teach you more of man. 
Of moral evil and of good. 

Than all the sages can ! 

Just at my gate, the man who keeps in order the 
roads of the parish was hard at work. How pleasant, 
I thought, to work amid the pure air and the sweet- 
smelling clover ! And how pleasant, too, to have work 
to do of such a nature that when you go to it every 
morning you can make quite sure that, barring acci- 



142 Work and Play. 

dent, you will accomplish a certain amount before the 
sun shall set ; while as for the man whose work is 
that of the brain and the pen, he never can be cer- 
tain in the morning how much his day's labour may 
amount to. He may sit down at his desk, spread out 
his paper, have his ink in the right place, and his 
favourite pen, and yet he may find that he cannot 
get on, that thoughts will not come, that his mind is 
utterly sterile, that he cannot see his way through his 
subject, or that if he can produce anything at all it is 
poor miserable stuff, whose poorness no one knows 
better than himself And so, after hours of effort and 
discouragement, he may have to lay his work aside, 
having accomplished nothing, having made no pro- 
gress at all — wearied, stupefied, disheartened, thinking 
himself a mere blockhead. Thus musing, I approached 
the roadman. I inquired how his wife and children 
were. I asked how he liked the new cottage he had 
lately moved into. Well, he said ; but it was far from 
his work ; he had walked eight miles and a-half that 
morning to his work ; he had to walk the same dis- 
tance home again in the evening after labouring all 
day ; and for this his wages were thirteen shillings a- 
week, with a deduction for such days as he might be 
unable to work. He did not mention all this by way of 
complaint ; he was comfortably off, he said ; he should 
be thankful he was so much better off than many. He 



Work and Play. 143 



had got a little pony lately very cheap, which would 
carry himself and his tools to and from his employ- 
ment, and that would be very nice. In all likelihood, 
my friendly reader, the roadman would not have been 
so communicative to you ; but as for me, it is my duty 
and my happiness to be the sympathising friend of 
every man, woman, and child in this parish, and it 
pleases me much to believe that there is no one 
throughout its little population who does not think of 
me and speak to me as a friend. I talked a little 
longer to the roadman about parish affairs. We mu- 
tually agreed in remarking the incongruous colours of 
a pair of ponies which passed in a little phaeton, of 
which one was cream-coloured and the other dapple- 
gray. The phaeton came from a friend's house a little 
way off, and I wondered if it were going to the railway 
to bring some one who (I knew) was expected ; for in 
such simple matters do we simple country-folk find ! 
something to maintain the interest of life. I need not 
go on to describe what other things I did ; how I 
looked with pleasure at a field of oats and another of 
potatoes in which I am concerned, and held several i 
short conversations with passers-by ; but the result of i 
the whole was a conviction that, after all, it was best I 
to set to work at once, though well remembering how 
much by indoor work in the country on such a day ; 
as this one is missing. And the thought of the road- j 



144 Work and Play. 

man's seventeen miles of walking, in addition to his 
day's work, was something of a reproof and a stimulus. 
And thus, determined at least to make a beginning, 
did I write this much Cojicerning Work and Flay. 

I find a great want in all that is written on the 
subject of recreation. People tell me that I need 
recreation, that I cannot do without it, that mind and 
body alike demand it. I know all that, but they do 
not tell me how to recreate myself. They fight shy 
of all practical details. Now it is just these I want. 
All working men must have play ; but what sort of 
play can we have? I envy schoolboys their facility 
of being amused ; and of finding recreation which 
entirely changes the current of their thoughts. A boy 
flying his kite or whipping his top is pursued by no 
remicmbrance of the knotty line of Virgil which 
puzzled him a little while ago in school ; but when 
the grown-up man takes his sober afternoon walk — 
perhaps the only relaxation which he has during the 
day — he is thinking still of the book which he is 
writing and of the cares which he has left at home. 
Then, and all the worse for myself, I can feel no 
interest in flying a kite, or rigging and sailing a little 
ship, or making a mill-wheel and setting it going, or 
in marbles, or ball, or running races, or playing at 
leap-frog. And even if they did feel interest in athletic 



Woj'k and Play. 145 



sports, the lungs and sinews of most educated men of 
middle age would forbid their joining in them. I need 
not therefore suggest the doubt which would probably 
be cast upon a man's sanity were he found eagerly 
knuckling down (how stiff it would soon make him !), 
or wildly chasing the flying football, or making a rush 
at a friend and taking a flying leap over his head. Now 
what recreation, I want to know, is open to the middle- 
aged man of literary tastes % Shooting, coursing, fishing, 
says one ; but he does not care for shooting, or coursing, 
or fishing. Gardening, says another ; but he does not 
care for gardening. Watching ferns, caterpillars, frogs, 
and other * common objects of the country ; ' well, but 
he lives in town ; and if he did not, he does not feel the 
least interest in ferns and caterpillars. Music is sug- 
gested ; well, he has no great ear, and he may dwell 
where he can have little or none of it. Society ! pray 
what is society 1 No doubt the conversation of intel- 
ligent men and women is a most grateful and stimu- 
lating recreation ; but is there any recreation in dreary 
dinner-parties, where one listens to the twaddle of 
silly old gentlemen and emptier young ones, or in 
the hothouse atmosphere and crush of most evening 
parties? These are not play; they are very hard 
work ; and a treadmill work producing no beneficial 
results, but rather provocative of all manner of ill- 
tempers. Then, no doubt, there is most agreeable 

L 



146 Work and Play. 

recreation for some people in the excitement of a 
polka or galop and its attendant light and cheerful 
talk, not to say flirtation ; but then our representative 
man has got beyond these things : these are for young 
people — he is married now and sobered down ; he 
probably was never the man to make himself emi- 
nently agreeable in such a scene, and he is less so now 
than ever. Besides, if play be something from which 
you are to return with renewed strength and interest 
to work, I doubt whether the ball-room is the place 
where it is to be found. Late hours, a feverish 
atmosphere, and excessive exercise, tend to morning 
slumbers, headaches, crossness, and laziness. To find 
dancing which answers the end of recreation, we must 
go to less fashionable places. I like the pictures 
which Goldsmith gives us of the sunny summer' even- 
ings of France, where the whole population of the 
village danced to his flute in the shade ; and even the 
soured Childe Harold melted somewhat into sympathy 
with the Spanish peasants as they twirled their casta- 
nets in the twilight. Southey's picture is a pretty one, 
but its description sounds somewhat unreal : — 

But peace was on the cottage, and the fold 

From court intrigue, from bickering faction far : 

Beneath the chestnut-tree love's tale was told. 

And to the tinkling of the light guitar. 

Sweet stoop'd the western sun, sweet rose the evening star ! 



Work and Play. 147 

Nor let it be fancied that such a scene cannot be 
represented except in countries to which distance and 
strangeness give their interest. This very season, on 
a beautiful summer evening, I saw a happy party of 
eighty country-folk dancing upon a greener little bit 
of turf than Goldsmith ever saw in France. And I 
wished such things were more common ; though the 
grave Saxon spirit, equal to the enjoyment of such 
gaiety now and then, might perhaps flag under it did it 
come too often. But on the occasion to which I refer, 
there was no lack of innocent cheerfulness ; the enjoy- 
ment seemed real ; and though there were no castanets 
and no guitars, but a fiddle for music and reels for 
dances, there were as pretty faces and as graceful figures 
among the girls, I warrant, as you would find from the 
Rhine to the Pyrenees. 

But, to resume the somewhat ravelled thread of 
our discussion, — if a man has come to this, that he 
can feel no interest in such recreations as those which 
we have mentioned, what is he to do % And let it be 
remembered that I am putting no fanciful case : be 
sorry, if you will, for the man who from taste and 
habit cannot be easily amused ; but remember that 
such is the lot of a very large proportion of the intel- 
lectual labourers of the race. And what is such a 
man to do % After using his eyes and exerting his 
brain all the forenoon in reading and writing by way 



148 Work and Play. 

of work, must he just use his eyes and exert his brain 
all the evening in reading and writing by way of 
play? Has it come to this, that he must find the 
only recreation that remains for him in the Times, 
the Quarterly Review, and Fraser's Magazine 1 All 
these things are indeed excellent in their way. They 
relax and interest the mind : but then they wear 
out the eyes, they contract the chest, and render 
the muscles flabby, they ruin the ganglionic appa- 
ratus; they make the mind, but unmake the body. 
Now that will not do. Does nothing remain, in 
the way of play, but the afternoon walk or drive : 
the vacant period between dinner and tea, when 
no one works, notwithstanding Johnson's warning, 
that he who resolves that he cannot work between 
dinner and tea, will probably proceed to the conclu- 
sion that he cannot work between breakfast and 
dinner; a little quiet gossip with your wife, a little 
romping with your children, if you have a wife and 
children ; and then back again to the weary books % 
Think of the elder Disraeli, who looked at printed 
pages so long, that by and by, wherever he looked, 
he saw nothing but printed pages ; and then became 
blind. Think what poor specimens of the human 
animal, physically, many of our noblest and ablest 
men are. Do not men, by their beautiful, touching, 
and far-reaching thoughts, reach the heart and form 



IVor^ and Play. 149 

the mind of thousands, who could not run a hundred 
yards without panting for breath, who could not jump 
over a five-feet wall though a mad bull were after 
them, who could not dig in the garden for ten 
minutes without having their brain throbbing and 
their entire frame trembling, who could not carry in 
a sack of coals though they should never see a fire 
again, who could never find a day's employment as 
porters, labourers, grooms, or anything but tailors? 
Educated and cultivated men, I tell you that you 
make a terrible mistake ; and a mistake which, 
before the end of the twentieth century, will sadly 
deteriorate the Anglo-Saxon race. You make your 
recreation purely mental. You give a little play to 
your minds after their day's work ; but you give no 
play to your eyes, to your brains, to your hearts, to 
your digestion, — in short, to your bodies. And there- 
fore you grow weak, unmuscular, nervous, dyspeptic, 
near-sighted, out-of-breath, neuralgic, pressure-on-the- 
brain, thin-haired men. And in time, not only does 
all the train of evils that follows your not providing 
proper recreation for your physical nature, come 
miserably to affect your spirits ; but, besides that, it 
comes to jaundice and pervert and distort all your 
views of men and things, I have heard of those 
who, though suffering almost ceaseless pain, could yet 
think hopefully of the prospects of humanity, and 



150 IVorl' and Play. 



take an unprejudiced view of some political question 
that appealed strongly to prejudice, and give kindly 
sympathy and sound advice to a poor man who came 
to seek advice in some little trouble which is great to 
him. But I fear that, in the majority of instances, the 
human being whose liver is in a bad way, whose 
digestion is ruined, or even who is suffering from 
violent toothache, is prone to snub the servants, to 
box the children's ears, to think that Britain is going 
to destruction, and that the world is coming to an 
end. 

It may be said, that the class of intellectual workers 
have their yearly holiday. August and September in 
each year bring with them the ' Long Vacation.' 
And it is well, indeed, that most men whose work is 
brain-work have that blessed period of relief, wherein, 
amid the Swiss snows, or the Highland heather, or 
out upon the Mediterranean waves, they seek to re- 
invigorate the jaded body and mind, and to lay in a 
store of health and strength with which to face the 
winter work again. But this is not enough. A man 
might just as well say that he would eat in August 
or September all the food which is to support him 
through the year, as think in that time to take the 
whole year's recreation, the whole year's play, in one 
bonne bouche. Recreation must be a daily thing. 
Every day must have its play, as well as its work. 




ALriNE SNOW. 



There is much sound, practical sense in Sir Thomas 
More's Utopia ; and nowhere sounder than where he 
tells us that in his model country he would have 
'■ half the day allotted for work, and half for honest 
recreation.' Every day, bringing, as it does, work to 
every man who is worth his salt in this world, ought 
likewise to bring its play : play which will turn the 
thoughts into quite new and cheerful channels ; which 
will recreate the body as well as the mind ; and tell 
me, Great Father of Waters, to whom Rasselas ap- 
pealed upon a question of equal difficulty, or tell me, 
anybody else, what that play shall be ! Practically, 
in the case of most educated men, of most intellectual 



152 Work and Play. 

workers, heavy reading and writing stand for work, 
and light reading and writing stand for play. 

I can well imagine what a delightful thing it must 
be for a toil-worn barrister to throw briefs, and cases, 
and reports aside, and quitting the pestilential air of 
Westminster Hall, laden with odours from the Thames 
which are not the least like those of Araby the Blest, 
to set off to the Highlands for a few weeks among 
the moors. No schoolboy at holiday-time is lighter- 
hearted than he, as he settles down into his corner in 
that fearfully fast express train on the Great Northern 
Railway. And when he reaches his box in the North 
at last, what a fresh and happy sensation it must be 
to get up in the morning in that pure unbreathed air, 
with the feeling that he has nothing to do, — nothing, 
at any rate, except what he chooses ; and after the 
deliberately-eaten breakfast, to saunter forth with the 
delightful sense of leisure, — to know that he has time 
to breathe and think after the ceaseless hurry of the 
past months, — and to know that nothing will go wrong 
although he should sit down on the mossy parapet of 
the little one-arched bridge that spans the brawling 
mountain-stream, and there rest, and muse, and dream 
just as long as he likes ! Two or three such men come 
to this neighbourhood yearly ; and I enjoy the sight 
of them, they look so happy. Every little thing, if 
they indeed be genial, true, unstififened men, is a 



Work and Play. 153 



source of interest to them. The total change makes 

them grow rapturous about matters which we, who 

are quite accustomed to them, take more coolly. I 

think, when I look at them, of the truthful lines of 

Gray :- 

See the wretch, that long has tost 

On the thorny bed of pain, 
At length repair his vigour lost. 

And breathe and walk again : 
The meanest flow'ret of the vale. 
The simplest note that swells the gale, 
The common sun, the air, the skies, 
To him are opening paradise. 

Equidem invideo, a little. I feel somewhat vexed 
when I think how much more beautiful these pleasant 
scenes around me really are, than what, by any effort, 
I can make them seem to me. You hard-wrought 
town-folk, when you come to rural regions, have the 
advantage of us leisurely country -people. 

But, much as that great Queen's Counsel enjoys 
his long vacation's play, you see it is not enough. 
Look how thin his hair is, how pale his cheeks are, 
how fleshless those long fingers, how unmuscular those 
arms. What he needs, in addition to the autumn holi- 
day, is some bond fide play every day of his life. What 
is his amusement when in town? Why, mainly it 
consists of going into society, where he gains nothing 
of elasticity and vigour, but merely injures his diges- 



154 lVo?'k and Play. 



tive organs. Why does he not rather have half-an- 
hour's Hvely bodily exercise, — rowing, or quoits, or 
tennis, or skating, or anything he may have taste for % 
And if it be foohsh to take all the year's play at once, 
as so many intellectual workers think to do, much 
more foolish is it to keep all the play of life till the 
work is over : to toil and moil at business through all 
the better years of our time in this world, in the hope 
that at length we shall be able to retire from business, 
and make the evening of life all holiday, all play. In 
all likelihood the man who takes this course will never 
retire at all, except into an untimely grave ; and if 
he should live to reach the long-coveted retreat, he 
will find that all play and no work makes life quite 
as wearisome and as little enjoyable as all work and 
no play. Eimui will make him miserable ; and body 
and mind, deprived of their wonted occupation, will 
soon break down. After very hard and long-continued 
work, there is indeed a pleasure in merely sitting still 
and doing nothing. But after the feeling of pure ex- 
haustion is gone, that will not suffice. A boy enjoys 
play, but he is miserable in enforced idleness. In 
writing about retiring from the task-work of life, one 
naturally thinks of that letter to Wordsworth, in 
which Charles Lamb told what he felt when he was 
finally emancipated from his drudgery in the India 
House : — 



IVorl' and Play. 155 



I came home FOR EVER on Tuesday week. The incom- 
prehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me. It was 
like passing from life into eternity. Every year to be as 
long as three ; that is, to have three times as much real 
time — time that is my own — in it I I wandered about 
thinking I was happy, and feeling I was not. But that 
tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand 
the nature of the gift. Holidays, even the annual month, 
were always uneasy joys, with their conscious fugitive- 
ness, the craving after making the most of them. Now, 
when all is holiday, there are no holidays. I can sit at 
home, in rain or shine, without a restless impulse for 
walkings. 

There are unhappy beings in the world, who secretly 
stand in fear of all play, on the hateful and wicked 
notion, which I believe some men regard as being of 
the essence of Christianity, though in tmth it is its 
contradiction, that everything pleasant is sinful, — that 
God dislikes to see His creatures cheerful and happy. 
I think it is the author of Friends in Council who says 
something to the effect, that many people, infected 
with that Puritan falsehood, slink about creation, afraid 
to confess that they ever are enjoying themselves. It 
is a sad thing when such a belief is entertained by 
even grown-up men ; but it stirs me to absolute fury 
when I know of it being impressed upon poor little 
children, to repress their natural gaiety of heart. Did 
you ever, my reader, read that dreary and preposter- 



156 Work and Play. 

ous book in which Thomas Clarkson sought to show- 
that Quakerism is not inconsistent with common 
sense 1 Probably not ; but perhaps you may have 
met with Jeffrey's review of it. Nothing short of a 
vehement kicking could reHeve my feelings if I heard 
some sly, money-making old rascal impressing upon 
some merry children that 

Stillness and quietness both of spirit and body are ne- 
cessary, as far as they can be obtained. Hence, Quaker 
children are rebuked for all expressions of anger, as tend- 
ing to raise those feelings which ought to be suppressed ; 
a raising even of the voice beyond due bounds is dis- 
couraged, as leading to the disturbance of their minds. 
They are taught to rise in the morning in quietness ; to 
go about their ordinary occupations with quietness ; and 
with quietness to retire to their beds. 

Can you think of more complete flying in the face 
of the purposes of the kind Creator ? Is it not His 
manifest intention that childhood should be the time 
of merry laughter, of gaiety, and shouts, and noise ? 
There is not a sadder sight than that of a little child 
prematurely subdued and 'quiet' Let me know of 
any drab-coated humbug impressing such ideas on any 
child of mine ; and though from circumstances I can- 
not personally see him put under the pump, I know 
certain quarters in which it is only needful to drop a 
very faint hint, in order to have him first pumped upon, 
and then tarred and feathered. 



Work and Play. 157 



But there is another class of mortals, who are free 
from the Puritan principle, and who have no objection 
to amusement for themselves, but who seem to have 
no notion that their inferiors and their servants ought 
ever to do anything but work. The reader will re- 
member the fashionable governess in The Old Curiosity 
Shop, who insisted that only genteel children should 
ever be permitted to play. The well-known lines of 
Dr. Isaac Watts — 

In books, or work, or healthful play, 
Let my first years be pass'd — 

were applicable, she maintained, only to the children of 
famihes of the wealthier sort : while for poor children 
there must be a new reading, which she improvised as 
follows : — 

In work, work, work. In work alway, 

Let my first years be pass'd. 

That I may give, for every day, 

Some good account at last. 

And as for domestic servants, poor creatures, I fear 
there is many a house in which there is no provision 
whatever made for play for them. There can be no 
drearier round of life than that to which their em- 
ployers destine them. From the moment they rise, 
hours before any member of the family, to the moment 
when they return to bed, it is one constant push of 
sordid labour, — often in chambers to which air and 



158 Work and Play. 

light and cheerfulness can never come. And if they 
ask a rare holiday, what a fuss is made about it ! 
Now, what is the result of all this % Some poor soli- 
tary beings do actually sink into the spiritless drudges 
which such a life tends to make them : but the greater 
number feel that they cannot live with all work and 
no play ; and as they cannot get play openly, they 
get it secretly : they go out at night, when you, their 
mistress, are asleep ; or they bring in their friends at 
those unseasonable hours : they get that amusement 
and recreation on the sly, and with the sense that they 
are doing wrong and deceiving, which they ought to 
be permitted to have openly and honestly : and thus 
you break down their moral principle, you train them 
to cheat you, you educate them into liars and thieves. 
Of course, your servants thus regard you as their 
natural enemy : it is fair to take any advantage you 
can of a gaoler : you are their task-imposer, their 
driver, their gaoler, — anything but their friend ; and 
if they can take advantage of you in any way, they 
will. And serve you right. 

I have known injudicious clerg)TTien who did all 
they could to discourage the games and sports of their 
parishioners. They could not prevent them ; but one 
thing they did, — they made them disreputable. They 
made sure that the poor man who ran in a sack, or 
climbed a greased pole, felt that thereby he was for- 



Work and Play. 159 



feiting his character, perhaps imperilling his salvation : 
and so he thought that, having gone so far, he might 
go the full length : and thus he got drunk, got into 
a fight, thrashed his wife, smashed his crockery, and 
went to the lock-up. How much better it would 
have been had the clergyman sought to regulate these 
amusements ; and, since they would go on, try to make 
sure that they should go creditably and decently ! 
Thus, poor folk might have been cheerful without 
having their conscience stinging them all the time : 
and let it be remembered, that if you pervert a man's 
moral sense (which you may quite readily do with the 
uneducated classes) into fancying that it is wicked 
to use the right hand or the right foot, while the man 
still goes on using the right hand and the right foot, 
you do him an irreparable mischief : you bring on a 
temper of moral recklessness ; and help him a con- 
siderable step toward the gallows. Since people must 
have amusement, and will have amusement, for any 
sake do not get them to think that amusement is 
wicked. You cannot keep them from finding recrea- 
tion of some sort : you may drive them to find it 
at a lower level, and to partake of it soured by re- 
morse, and by the wretched resolution that they will 
have it right or wrong. Instead of anathematising all 
play, sympathise with it genially and heartily; and 
say, with kind-hearted old Burton : — 



i6o Work and Play. 

Let the world have their May-games, wakes, Whitsun- 
ales ; their dancings and concerts ; their puppet-shows, 
hobby-horses, tabors, bagpipes, balls, barley-breaks, and 
whatever sports and recreations please them best, provided 
they be followed with discretion. 

Let it be here remarked, that recreation can be 
fully enjoyed only by the man who has some earnest 
occupation. The end of work is to enjoy leisure ; 
but to enjoy leisure you must have gone through 
work. Play-time must come after school-time, other- 
wise it loses its savour. Play, after all, is a relative 
thing ; it is not a thing which has an absolute exist- 
ence. There is no such thing as play, except to the 
worker. It comes out by contrast. Put white upon 
white, and you can hardly see it : put white upon 
black, and how plain it is. Light your lamp in the 
sunshine, and it is nothing : you must have darkness 
round it to make its presence felt. And besides this, 
a great part of the enjoyment of recreation consists 
in the feeling that we have earned it by previous hard 
work. One goes out for the afternoon walk with a 
light heart when one has done a good task since 
breakfast. It is one thing for a dawdling idler to set 
off to the Continent or to the Highlands, just because 
he is sick of everything around him ; and quite another 
thing when a hard-wrought man, who is of some use 
in life, sets off, as gay as a lark, with the pleasant feel- 



Work and Play. i6i 



ing that he lias brought some worthy work to an end, 
on the selfsame tour. And then a busy man finds a 
relish in simple recreation ; while a man who has 
nothing to do finds all things wearisome, and thinks 
that life is 'used up:' it takes something quite out 
of the way to tickle that indurated palate : you might 
as well think to prick the hide of a hippopotamus 
with a needle, as to excite the interest of that blase 
being by any amusement which is not highly spiced 
with the cayenne of vice. And thai, certainly, has a 
powerful effect. It was a glass of water the wicked 
old Frenchwoman was drinking when she said, ' Oh 
that this were a sin, to give it a relish ! ' 

So it is worth while to work, if it were only that 
we might enjoy play. Thus doth Mr. Heliogabalus, 
my next neighbour, who is a lazy man and an im- 
mense glutton, walk four miles every afternoon of his 
life. It is not that he hates exertion less, but that he 
loves dinner more ; and the latter cannot be enjoyed 
unless the former is endured. And the man whose 
disposition is the idlest may be led to labour when he 
finds that labour is his only chance of finding any 
enjoyment in life. James Montgomery sums up much 
truth in a couple of lines in his Pelican Island, which 
run thus :— 

Labour, the symbol of man's punishment ; 
Labour, the secret of man's happiness. 
M 



1 62 lVo7'k and Play. 



Why on earth do people thnik it fine to be idle 
and useless % Fancy a drone superciliously desiring a 
working bee to stand aside, and saying, ' Out of the 
way, you miserable drudge ; / never made a drop of 
honey in all my life !' I have observed too, that 
some silly people are ashamed that it should be 
known that they are so useful as they really are, and 
take pains to represent themselves as more helpless, 
ignorant, and incapable than the fact. I have heard 
a weak old lady boast that her grown-up daughters 
were quite unable to fold up their own dresses ; and 
that as for ordering dinner, they had not a notion of 
such a thing. This and many similar particulars were 
stated with no small exultation, and that by a person 
far from rich, and equally far from aristocratic. ' What 
a silly old woman you are ! ' was my silent reflection ; 
' and if your daughters really are what you represent 
them, woe betide the poor man who shall marry one 
of the incapable young noodles !' Give me the man, 
I say, who can turn his hand to all things, and who 
is not ashamed to confess that he can do so ; who 
can preach a sermon, nail up a paling, prune a fruit- 
tree, make a water-wheel or a kite for his little boy, 
write an article for Fraser or a leader for the Times or 
the Saturday Review. What a fine, genial, many-sided 
life did Sydney Smith lead at his Yorkshire parish ! 
I should have liked, I own, to have found in it more 



I Fori' and Play. 163 



traces of the clergyman ; but perhaps the biographer 
thought it better not to parade these. And in the 
regard of facing all difficulties with a cheerful heart, 
and nobly resolving to be useful and helpful in little 
matters as well as big, I think that life was as good 
a sermon as ever was preached from pulpit. 

I have already said, in the course of this rambling 
discussion, that recreation must be such as shall turn 
the thoughts into a new channel, otherwise it. is no 
recreation at all. And walking, which is the most 
usual physical exercise, here completely fails. Walk- 
ing has grown by long habit a purely automatic act, 
demanding no attention : we think all the time we 
are walking ; Southey even read while he took his 
daily walk. But Southey's story is a fearful warning. 
It will do a clergyman no good whatever to leave his 
desk and to go forth for his amstitutiotial, if he is still 
thinking of his sermon, and trying to see his way 
through the treatment of his text. You see in Gray's 
famous poem how little use is the mere walk to the 
contemplative man, how thoroughly it falls short of 
the end of play. You see how the hectic lad who is 
supposed to have written the Elegy employed himself 
when he wandered abroad : — 

There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech. 
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, 

His listless length at noontide would he stretch. 
And pore upon the brook that babbles by. 



164 Work and Play. 

Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, 
Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove ; 

Now drooping, woful, wan, like one forlorn, 

Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love. 

That was the fashion in which the poor fellow took 
his daily recreation and exercise ! His mother no 
doubt packed him out to take a bracing walk ; she 
ought to have set him to saw wood for the fire, or to 
dig in the garden, or to clean the door-handles if he 
had muscle for nothing more. These things would 
have distracted his thoughts from their grand flights, 
and prevented his mooning about in that Hstless 
manner. Of course while walking he was bothering 
away about the poetical trash he had in his desk at 
home ; and so he knocked up his ganglionic functions, 
he encouraged tubercles on his lungs, and came to 
furnish matter for the 'hoary-headed swain's' narra- 
tive, the silly fellow ! 

Riding is better than walking, especially if you have 
a rather skittish steed, Avho compels you to attend to 
him on pain of being landed in the ditch, or sent, 
meteor-like, over the hedge. The elder Disraeli has 
preserved the memory of the diversions in which 
various hard thinkers found relaxation. Petavius, 
who wrote a deeply learned book, which I never saw, 
and which no one I ever saw ever heard of, twirled 
round his chair for five minutes every two hours that 



Work and Play. 165 

he was at work. Samuel Clarke used to leap over the 
tables and chairs. It was a rule which Ignatius 
Loyola imposed on his followers, that after two hours 
of work, the mind should always be unbent by some 
recreation. Every one has heard of Paley's remark- 
able feats of rapid horsemanship. Hundreds of times 
did that great man fall off. The Sultan Mahomet, 
who conquered Greece, unbent his mind by carving 
wooden spoons. In all these things you see, kindly 
reader, that true recreation was aimed at : that is, 
entire change of thought and occupation. Izaak 
Walton, again, who sets forth so pleasantly the praise 
of angling as the ' Contemplative Man's Recreation,' 
wrongly thinks to recommend the gentle craft by 
telling us that the angler may think all the while he 
plies it. I do not care for angling ; I never caught a 
minnow ; but still I joy in good old Izaak's pleasant 
pages, like thousands who do not care a pin for fish- 
ing, but who feel it like a cool retreat into green fields 
and trees to turn to his genial feeling and hearty 
pictures of quiet English scenery. He, however, had 
a vast opinion of the joys of angling in a pleasant 
country : only let him go quietly a-fishmg — 

And if contentment be a stranger then, 
I '11 ne'er look for it, but in heaven, again. 

And he repeats with much approval the sentiments 



1 66 Woi'k and Play. 

of 'Jo. Davors, Esq.,' in whose lines we may see much 
more of scenery than of the actual fishing : — 

Let me live harmlessly ; and near the brink 
Of Trent or Avon have a dwelling-place, 

Where I may see my quill or cork down sink, 
With eager bite of perch, or bleak, or dace : 

And on the world and my Creator think : 

While some men strive ill-gotten goods to embrace ; 

And others spend their time in base excess 

Of wine, or worse, in war and wantonness. 

Let them that list, these pastimes still pursue. 
And on such pleasing fancies feed their fill ; 

So I the fields and meadows green may view, 
And daily by fresh rivers walk at will. 

Among the daisies and the violets blue. 
Red hyacinth and yellow daffodil ; 

Purple narcissus like the morning's rays, 

Pale gander-grass, and azure culver-keys. 

All these, and many more of His creation. 

That made the heavens, the angler oft doth see ; 

Taking therein no little delectation. 

To think how strange, how wonderful they be ! 

Framing thereof an inward contemplation. 
To set his heart from other fancies free : 

And whilst he looks on these with joyful eye. 

His mind is rapt above the starry sky. 

Who shall say that the terza-rima stanza was not 
written in English fluently and gracefully, before the 
days of Whistlecraft and Don Juan ? 



If thou desirest, reader, to find a catalogue of sports 
from whicli tliou mayest select that which likes thee 
best, turn up Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy^ or 
Joseph Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the People of 
England. There mayest thou read of Rural Exercises 
practised by Persotis of Rank, of Rural Exercises 
Generally Practised : (note how ingeniously Strutt puts 
the case : he does not say practised by Snobs, or 
the Lower Orders, or the Mobocracy.) Next are 
Pastimes Exercised in Towns and Cities ; and finally, 
Do?nestic Amnsements, and Pastimes Appropriated to 
particular Seasons. Were it not that my paper is 
verging to its close, I could surprise thee with a vast 
display of curious erudition ; but I must content my- 
self with having laid down the conditions which all 
true play must fulfil ; and let every man choose the 
kind of play which hits his peculiar taste. There 
never has been in England any lack of sports in 
nominal existence : I heartily wish they were all 
(except the cruel ones of baiting and torturing 
animals) still kept up. The following lines are from a 
little book published in the reign of James I. : — 

Man, I dare challenge thee to Throw the Sledge, 
To Jump or Leape over ditch or hedge : 
To Wrastle, play at Stoleball, or to Runne, 
To Pitch the Barre, or to shoote oft" a Gunne : 
To play at Loggetts, Nine Holes, or Ten Pinnes, 
To try it out at Football by the shinnes : 




SHOOTING THE GUN. 



At Ticktack, Irish Noddie, Maw, and Ruffe, 

At Hot Cockles, Leapfrog, or Blindmanbuffe : 

To drink half-pots, or deale at the whole canne, 

To play at Base, or Pen and ynkhorne Sir Jan : 

To daunce the Morris, play at Barley-breake, 

At all exploytes a man can think or speak : 

At Shove-Groate, Venterpoynt, or Crosse and Pile, 

At Beshrow him that's last at yonder Style : 

At leaping o'er a Midsommer-bon-fier, 

Or at the Drawing Dun out of the Myer 

In most agricultural districts it is wonderful how 
little play there is in the life of the labouring class. 
Well may the agricultural labourer be called a ' work- 
ing man,' for truly he does little else than work. His 



Work and Play, 169 



eating and sleeping are cut down to the minimttm 
that shall suffice to keep him in trim for working. 
And the consequence is, that when he does get a 
holiday, he does not know what to make of himself ; 
and in too many cases he spends it in getting drunk. 
I know places where the working men have no idea 
of any play, of any recreation, except getting drunk. 
And if their overwrought wives, who must nurse five 
or six children, prepare the meals, tidy the house, — 
in fact, do the work which occupies three or four ser- 
vants in the house of the poorest gentleman, — if the 
poor oven\T:ought creatures can contrive to find a 
blink of leisure through their waking hours, they know 
how to make no nobler use of it than to gossip, rather 
ill-naturedly, about their neighbours' affairs, and espe- 
cially to discuss the domestic arrangements of the 
squire and the parson. Working men and women too 
frequently have forgotten how to play. It is so long 
since they did it, and they have so little heart for it. 
And God knows that the pressure of constant care, 
and the wolf kept barely at arm's length from the door, 
do leave little heart for it. O wealthy proprietors of 
land, you who have so much in your power, try to 
infuse something of joy and cheerfulness into the lot 
of your humble neighbours ! Read and ponder the 
essay and the conversation on Recreation, which you 
will find in the first volume of Friends in Council. 



And read again, I trust for the hundredth time, the 
poem from which I quote the hnes which follow. Let 
me say here, that I verily believe some of my readers 
will not know the source whence I draw these lines. 
More is the shame : but longer experience of life is 
giving me a deep conviction of the astonishing ignor- 
ance of my fellow-creatures. I shall not tell them. They 
shall have the mortification of asking their friends the 
question. Only let it be added, that the poem where the 
passage stands contains others more sweet and touching 
by far, — so sweet and touching that in all the range of 
English poetry they have never been surpassed : — 
How often have I blest the coming day, 
When toil remitting lent its turn to play ; 
And all the village train, from labour free, 
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree, 
While many a pastime circled in the shade. 
The young contending as the old survey'd ; 
And many a gambol frolick'd o'er the ground. 
And sleights of art and feats of strength went round. 
And still, as each repeated pleasure tired. 
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired : 
The dancing pair that simply sought renown, 
By holding out to tire each other down, — 
The swain mistrustless of his smutted face. 
While secret laughter titter'd round the place, — 
The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love. 
The matron's glance that would those looks reprove : — 
These were thy charms, sweet village, sports like these, 
With sweet succession, taught even toil to please. 




CHAPTER V 

CONCERNING COUNTRY HOUSES AND COUNTRY LIFE. 

ONCE upon a time, I lived in the very heart of 
London : absolutely in Threadneedle Street. 
I lived in the house of a near relation, an opulent 
lawyer, who, after he had become a rich man, chose 



172 Country HojLscs and 

still to dwell in the locality where he had made his 
fortune. All around, for miles in every direction, 
there were nothing but piles of houses — streets and 
lanes of dingy brick houses everywhere. Not a vestige 
of nature could be seen, except in the sky above, in 
the stunted vegetation of a few little City gardens, 
and in the foul and discoloured river. The very 
surface of the earth, for yards in depth, was the work 
of generations that had lived and died centuries 
before amid the narrow lanes of the ancient city. 
There, for months together, I, a boy without youth, 
under the care of one who, though substantially kind, 
had not a vestige of sympathy with nature or with 
home affections, wearily counted the days which were 
to pass before the yearly visit to a home far away. I 
cannot by any words express the thirst and craving 
which I then felt for green fields and trees. The very 
name of the country was like music in my ear ; and 
when I heard any man say he was going down to the 
country, how I envied him ! It was not so bad in 
winter : though even then the clear frosty days called 
up many pictures of cheerful winter skies away from 
those weary streets ; — of boughs bending beneath the 
quiet snow ; — of the beautiful fretwork of the frost 
upon the hedges and the grass, and of its exhilarating 
crispness in the air ; — of the stretches of the frozen 
river, seen through the leafless boughs, covered with 



Coun try L ife. 173 

happy groups whose merry faces were Uke a good- 
natured defiance of the wintry weather. But when the 
spring revival began to make itself felt, when the days 
began to lengthen, and the poor shrubs in the squares 
to bud, and when there was that accession of light 
during the day which is so cheerful after the winter 
gloom, then the longing for the country grew painfully 
strong, like the seaman's calenture, or the Swiss exile's 
yearning for his- native hills. Wlien I knew that the 
hawthorn hedges were white, and the fruit-trees laden 
with blossoms, how I longed to be among them ! I 
well remember the kindly feeling I bore to a dingy 
hostelry in a narrow lane off Cheapside, for the sake 
of its name. It was called Blossom's Inn; and many 
a time I turned out of my way, and stood looking up 
at its sign, with eyes that saw a very different scene 
from the blackened walls. I remember how I used to 
rise at early morning, and take long walks in whatever 
direction I thought it possible that a glimpse of any- 
thing like the country could be seen : away up the 
New North Road there were some trees, and some 
little plots of grass. There was something at once 
pleasing and sad about those curious little gardens 
which still exist here and there in the heart of London, 
consisting generally of a plot of grass of a dozen yards 
in length and breadth, surrounded by a walk c f yellow 
gravel, stared at on every side by the back windows 



1/4 Country Houses and 

of tall brick houses, and containing a few little trees, 
whose leaves in spring look so strangely fresh against 
the smoke-blackened branches. I do not wish to be 
egotistical ; and I describe all these feelings merely 
because I believe that honestly to tell exactly what 
one has himself felt, is the true way to describe the 
common feelings of most people in like circumstances. 
I dare say that if any youth of sixteen, pent up in 
Threadneedle Street now, should happen to read what 
I have written, he will understand it all with a hearty 
sympathy which I shall not succeed in exciting in the 
minds of many of my readers. But such a one will 
know, thoroughly and completely, what pictures rise 
before the mind's eye of one pent up amid miles of 
brick walls and stone pavements, at the mention of 
the country, of trees, hedge-rows, fields, quiet lanes 
and footpaths, and simple rustic people. 

I wish to assure the man, shut up in a great city, 
that he has compensations and advantages of which 
he probably does not think. The keenness of his 
relish for country scenes, the intensity of his enjoy- 
ment of his occasional glimpses of them, counter- 
balance in a great degree the fact that his glimpses of 
them are but few. I live in the country now, and have 
done so for several years. It is a beautiful district of 
country too, and amid a quiet and simple population ; 
yet I must confess that my youthful notion of rural 



Country L ife. 1 7 5 

bliss is a good deal abated. ' Use lessens marvel,' it 
is said : one cannot be always in raptures about what 
one sees every hour of every day. It is the man in 
populous cities pent, who knows the value of green 
fields. It is your Cockney (I mean your educated 
Londoner) who reads Bracehridge Hall with the keen- 
est delight, and luxuriates in the thought of country 
scenes, country houses, country life. He has not 
come close enough to discern the flaws and blemishes 
of the picture ; and he has not learned by experience 
that in whatever scenes led, human life is always much 
the same thing. I have long since found that the 
country, in this nineteenth century, is by no means a 
scene of Arcadian innocence ; — that its apparent sim- 
plicity is sometimes dogged stupidity ; — that men lie 
and cheat in the country just as much as in the town, 
and that the country has even more of mischievous 
tittle-tattle ; — that sorrow and care and anxiety may 
quite well live in Elizabethan cottages grown over with 
honeysuckle and jasmine, and that very sad eyes may 
look forth from windows round which roses t\vine. 
The poets (town poets, no doubt) were drawing upon 
their imagination, when they told how ' Virtue lives 
in Irwan's Vale,' and how ' with peace and plenty 
there, lives the happy villager.' Virtue and religion 
are plants of difficult growth, even in the country ; 
and notwithstanding Cowper's exquisite poem, I am 



1/6 Country Houses and 

not sure that ' the cahia retreat, the silent shade, 
with prayer and praise agree,' better than the closet 
into which the weary man may enter, in the quiet 
evening, after the business and bustle of the town. 
People may pace up and down a country lane, be- 
tween fragrant hedges of blossoming hawthorn, and 
tear their neighbours' characters to very shreds. And 
the eye that is sharp to see the minutest object on 
the hillside far away, may be blind to the beauty 
which is spread over all the landscape. Nor is the 
country always in the trim holiday dress which de- 
lights the summer wa)rfarer. Country roads are not 
all nicely gravelled walks between edges of clipped 
box, or through velvety turf, shaven by weekly mow- 
ings. There are many days on which the country 
looks, to any one without a most decided taste for it, 
extremely bleak and drear. The roads are puddles 
of mud, which will search its way through boots to 
which art has applied soles of two inches' thickness. 
The deciduous trees are shivering skeletons, bending 
before the howling blast. The sheep paddle about 
the brown fields, eating turnips mingled with clay. 
Now, for myself, I like all that : but a man from the 
town would not. I positively enjoy the wet, bluster- 
ing afternoon, with its raw wind, its driving sleet, its 
roads of mud. How delightful the rapid ' constitu- 
tional ' from half-past two till half-past four, with the 



Country Life. 177 

comfortable feeling that we have accomplished a good 
forenoon's work at our desk, (sermon or article, as the 
case may be,) and with the cheerful prospect of get- 
ting rid of all these sloppy garments, and feeling so 
snug and clean ere we sit down to dinner, when 
we shall hear the rain and wind softened into music 
through the wami crimson drapery of our windows ; 
and then the evening of leisure amid books and music, 
with the placens uxor on the other easy-chair by the 
fireside, and the little children, screaming with delight, 
tumbhng about one's knees. So I like even the gusty, 
rainy afternoon, for the sake of all that it suggests to 
me. Nor will the true inhabitant of the country 
forget the delight with which he has hailed a gloomy, 
drizzling November day, when he has evergreen shrubs 
to transplant. Have I not stood for hours, in a state 
of active and sensible enjoyment, watching how the 
hollies and yews and laurels gradually clothed some 
bare spot or unsightly corner, rejoicing that the calm 
air and ceaseless mizzle, which made my attendants 
and myself like soaked sponges, was life to these 
stout shoots and these bright hearty green leaves ! 
But a town man does not understand all these things ; 
and I have no doubt that on one of these January 
days, when the entire distant prospect — hills, sky, 
trees, fields — might be faithfully depicted on can- 
vas by different shades of Indian ink, he would 

N 



178 Country Houses and 

see nothing in the prospect but gloom and desola- 
tion. 

Then it is very picturesque to see the ploughman 
at work on a soft, mild winter day. It is a beautiful 
contrast, that light brown of the turned-over earth, 
and the fresh green of the remainder of the field ; and 
what more pleasing than these lines of fuiTow, so 
beautifully straight and regular? But go up and 
walk by the ploughman's side, you man from town, 
and see how you like it. You will find it awfully 
dirty work. In a few minutes you will find it diflicult 
to drag along your feet, laden with some pounds 
weight to each of adherent earth ; and you will have 
formed some idea of the physical exertion, and the 
constant attention, which the ploughman needs, to 
keep his furrow straight and even, to retain the 
plough the right depth in the ground, and to manage 
his horses. Hard work for that poor fellow ; and 
ill-paid work. No horse, mule, donkey, camel, or 
other beast of labour in the world, goes through so 
much exertion, in proportion to his strength, between 
sunrise and sunset, as does that rational being, all to 
earn the humblest shelter and the poorest fare that 
will maintain bare life. You walk beside him, and 
see how poorly he is dressed. His feet have been wet 
since six o'clock a.m., when he went half-a-mile from 
his cottage up to the stables of the farm to dress his 



Country Life. 179 

horses ; he has had a little tea and coarse bread, and 
nothing more, for his dinner at twelve o'clock, (I speak 
from personal knowledge :) he will have nothing more 
till his twelve (I have known it fifteen) hours of work 
are finished, when he will have his scanty supper : 
and while he is walking backwards and forwards all 
day, his mind is not so engaged but that he has 
abundant time to think of his little home anxieties, 
which are not little to him, though they may be 
nothing, my reader, to you — of the ailing wife at 
home, for whom the doctor orders wine which he 
cannot buy, and of the children, poorly fed, and 
barely clad, and hardly at all educated, bom to the 
same life of toil and penury as himself I know 
nothing about political economy ; I have not under- 
standing for it ; and I feel glad, when I think of the 
social evils I see, that the responsibility of treating 
them rests upon abler heads than mine. Neither do 
I know how much truth there may be in the stories 
of which I hear the echoes from afar, of the occasional 
privation and oppression of the manufacturing poor, 
against which, as it seems to me, these unhappy 
strikes and trades' unions are their helpless and frantic 
appeal. But I can say, from my own knowledge of 
the condition of our agricultural population, that 
sometimes men bearing the character of reputable 
farmers practise as great tyranny and cruelty towards 



i8o Coiintjy Houses and 

their labourers and cottars, under a pure sky and 
amid beautiful scenery, as ever disgraced the ugly and 
smoky factory town, where such things seem more in 
keeping with the locality. 

Yet, though in a gloomy mood, one can easily make 
out a long catalogue of country evils, — evils which I 
know cannot be escaped in a fallen world, and among 
a sinful race, — still I thank God that my lot is cast 
in the country. I know, indeed, that the town con- 
tains at once the best and the worst of mankind. In 
the country, we are, intellectually and morally, a sort 
of middling species ; we do not present the extremes, 
either in good or evil, which are to be found in the 
hot-house atmosphere of great cities. There is no 
reasoning with tastes, as every one knows ; but to 
some men there is, at every season, an indescribable 
charm about a country life. I like to know all about 
the people around me ; and I do not care though in 
return they know all, and more than all, about me. 
I like the audible stillness in which one lives on 
autumn days ; the murmur of the wind through trees 
even when leafless, and the brawl of the rivulet even 
when swollen and brown. There is a constant source 
of innocent pleasure and interest in little countiy 
cares, in planting and tending trees and flowers, in 
sympathising with one's horses and dogs, — ^even with 
'pigs and poultry. And although one may have lived 



Country L ifc. 1 8 1 

beyond middle age without the least idea that he had 
any taste for such matters, it is amazing how soon he 
will find, when he comes to call a country home his 
own, that the taste has only been latent, kept down 
by circumstances, and ready to spring into vigorous 
existence whenever the repressing circumstances are 
removed. Men in whom this is not so, are the excep- 
tion to the universal rule. Take the Senior Wrangler 
from his college, and put him down in a pretty country 
parsonage ; and in a few weeks he will take kindly to 
training honeysuckle and climbing roses, he will find 
scope for his mathematics in laying out a flower-gar- 
den, and he will be all excitement in planning and 
carrying out an evergreen shrubbery, a primrose bank, 
a winding walk, a little stream with a tiny waterfall, 
spanned by a rustic bridge. Proud he will be of that 
piece of engineering, as ever was Robert Stephenson 
when he had spanned the stormy Menai. There is 
something in all this simple work that makes a man 
kind-hearted : out-of-door occupation of this sort gives 
one much more cheerful views of men and things, and 
disposes one to sympathise heartily with the cottager 
proud of his little rose-plots, and of his enormous 
gooseberry that attained to renown in the pages of the 
county newspaper. I do not say anything of the in- 
calculable advantage to health which arises from this 
pleasant intermingling of mental and physical occupa- 



1 82 Country Houses and 

tion in the case of the recluse scholar ; nor of the 
animated rebound with which one lays down the pen 
or closes the volume, and hastens out to the total 
change of interest which is found in the open air \ nor 
of the evening at mental work again, but with the 
lungs that play so freely, the head that feels so cool 
and clear, the hand so firm and ready, testifying that 
we have not forgotten the grand truth that to care for 
bodily health and condition is a Christian duty, bring- 
ing with its due discharge an immediate and sensible 
blessing. I am sure that the poor man who comes to 
ask a favour of his parish clergyman, has a far better 
chance of finding a kind and unhurried hearing, if he 
finds him of an afternoon superintending his labourers, 
rosy with healthful exercise, delighted with the good 
effect which has been produced by some little im- 
provement — the deviation of a walk, the placing of an 
araucaria — than if he found the parson a bilious, dys- 
peptic, splenetic, gloomy, desponding, morose, misan- 
thropic, horrible animal, with knitted brow and jarring 
nerves, lounging in his easy-chair before the fire, and 
afraid to go out into the fine clear air, for fear (unhappy 
wretch) of getting a sore throat or a bad cough. I 
remember to have read somewhere of an humble 
philanthropist who undertook the reformation of a 
number of juvenile thieves ; and for that end employed 
them in a large garden somewhere near London, to raise 



Country Life. 183 

vegetables and flowers for the market. There did the 
youthful prig concentrate his thoughts on the plant- 
ing of cabbage, 'and find the unwonted delight of a 
day spent in innocent labour ; there did the area- 
sneak bud the rose and set the potato ; and there, as 
days passed on, under the gentle influence of vegetable 
nature, did a healthier, happier, purer tone come over 
the spiritual nature, even as a healthier blood came to 
heart and veins. The philanthropist was a true philo- 
sopher. There is not a more elevating and purifying 
occupation than that of tending the plants of the earth. 
I should never be afraid of finding a man revengeful, 
malignant, or cruel, whom I knew to be fond of his 
shrubs and flowers. And I believe that in the mind 
of most men of cultivation, there is some vague, unde- 
fined sense that the country is the scene where human 
life attains its happiest development. I believe that 
the great proportion of such men cherish the hope, per- 
haps a distant and faint one, that at some time they 
shall possess a country home, where they may pass the 
last years tranquilly, far from the tumult of cities. 
Many of those who cherish such a hope will never 
realise it ; and many more are quite unsuited for 
enjoying a country life were it within their reach. 
But all this is founded upon the instinctive desire 
there is in human nature to possess some portion 
of the earth's surface. You look with indescribable 



184 Country Houses and Conntry Life. 

interest at an acre of ground which is your own. 
There is something quite remarkable about your own 
trees. You have a sense of property in the sunset 
over your own hills. And there is a perpetual plea- 
sure in the sight of a fair landscape, seen from your 
own door. Do not believe people who say that all 
scenes soon become indifferent, through being con- 
stantly seen. An ugly street may cease to be a vexa- 
tion, when you get accustomed to it ; but a pleasant 
prospect becomes even more pleasant, when the beauty 
which arises from your own associations with it is 
added to that which is properly its own. No doubt, 
you do grow weary of the landscape before your 
windows, when you are spending a month at some 
place of temporary sojourn, seaside or inland ; but 
it is quite different with that which surrounds your 
own home. You do not try that by so exact- 
ing a standard. You never think of calling your 
constant residence dull, though it may be quiet to 
a degree which would make you think a place in- 
supportably dull, to which you were paying a week's 
visit. 

What an immense variety of human dwellings are 
comprised within the general name of the Country 
Home ! We begin with such places as Chatsworth 
and Belvoir, Amndel and Alnwick, Hamilton and 
Drumlanrig : houses standing far withdrawn within 




encircling woods, approached by avenues of miles in 
length, which debouch on public highways in districts 
of country quite remote from one another ; with acres 
of conservatory, and scores of miles of walks ; and 
shutting in their sacred precincts by great park walls 
from the approach and the view of an obtrusive world 
beyond. We think of the old Edwardian Castle, 
weather-worn and grim, with drawbridge and portcuUis 
and moat and oak-roofed hall and storied windows ; 
of the huge, square, corniced, many-chimneyed, ugly 
building of the renaissance, which never has anything 
to recommend its aspect except when it gains a dignity 
from enormous size ; then down through the classes 



1 86 



Country Houses and 



of manor-houses, abbeys, and halls, high-gabled, oriel- 
windowed, turret-staired, long-corridored, haunted- 
chambered; with their parks, greater or less, their oaken 
clumps, their spreading horse-chestnuts, their sunshiny 
glades, their startled deer ; till we come to the villa 
with a few acres of ground, such as Dean Swift wished 
for himself, with its modest conservatory, its neat little 
shrubbery, its short carriage drive, its brougham or 
phaeton drawn by one stout horse. Then, upon the 
outskirts of the country town, we find a class of less 
ambitious dwellings, which yet struggle for the title of 
villa — cheap would-be Gothic houses, with overhang- 
ing eaves and latticed windows, standing in a half-acre 
plot of ground, which yet is large enough to give a 
new direction to the tradesman's thoughts, by giving 
him space to cultivate a few shrubs and flowers. Last 
comes the wayside cottage, sometimes neat and pretty, 
often cold, damp, and ugly ; sometimes gay with its 
little plot of flowers, sometimes odorous with its neigh- 
bouring dung-heap ; the difference depending not half 
so much upon the income enjoyed by its tenant, as 
upon his having a tidy, active wife, and a kindly, im- 
proving, generous landlord. 

And various as the varied dwellings are the scenes 
amid which they stand. In rich English dales, in 
wild Highland glens, on the bank of quiet inland 
rivers, and on windy cliffs frowning over the ocean — 



I 



Country L ife. 187 

there, and in a thousand other places, we have still 
the country home, with its peculiar characteristics. 
Thither comes the postman only once a day, always 
anxiously, often nervously expected : and thither the 
box of books, the magazines of last month, and the 
reviews of last quarter, sent from the reading-club in 
the High Street of the town five miles off. How truly, 
by the way, has somebody or other stated that the 
next town and the railway station are always five 
miles away from every country house ! Thither the 
carrier, three times a-week, brings the wicker-woven 
box of bread ; there does the managing housewife 
have her store-room, round whose shelves are arranged 
groceries of every sort and degree ; and there, at un- 
certain intervals, dies the home-fed sheep or pig, 
which yieldeth joints which are pronounced far 
superior to any which the butcher's shop ever sup- 
plied. There, sometimes, is found the cheerful, 
modest establishment, calculated rather within the 
income, with everything comfortable, neat, and even 
elegant ; where family dinners may be enjoyed which 
afford real satisfaction to all, and win the approval of 
even the most refined gourmet ; and there sometimes, 
especially when the mistress of the house is a fool, is 
found the unhappy scramble of the menage that, with 
a thousand a-year, aims at aping five thousand ; where 
there is a French ladies'-maid of cracked reputation, 



1 88 Cow dry Houses and 

and a lady who talks largely of ' what she has been 
accustomed to,' and ' what she regards herself as en- 
titled to ;' where every-day comfort is sacrificed to 
occasional attempts at showy entertainments, to which 
the neighbouring peer goes under the pressure of a 
most urgent invitation ; where gooseberry champagne 
and very acid claret flow in hospitable profusion ; and 
where dressed-up stable-boys and ploughmen dash 
wildly up against each other, as the uneasy banquet 
strains anxiously along. 

Very incomplete would be any attempt at classify- 
ing the country homes of Britain, in which no men- 
tion should be made of the dwellings of the clergy. 
In this country, the parish priest is not isolated from 
all sympathy with the members of his flock by an 
enforced celibacy ; he is not only the spiritual guide 
of his parishioners, but he is in most instances the 
head of a family, the cultivator of the ground, the 
owner of horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and dogs. I do 
not deny that in theory, and once perhaps in a thou- 
sand times in practice, it is a finer thing that the 
clergyman should be one given exclusively to his 
sacred calling, standing apart from and elevated above 
the little prosaic cares of life, and ' having his conver- 
sation in heaven.' It seems at first as if it better be- 
fitted one who has to be much exercised in sacred 
thoughts and duties — whose hands are to dispense 



Country Life. 189 

the sacred emblems of Communion, and whose voice 
is to breathe direction and comfort into dying ears — 
to have nothing to do with such sublunary matters as 
seeing a cold bandage put upon a horse's foreleg, or 
arranging for the winter supply of hay, or considering 
as to laying in store of coals at the setting in of 
snowy weather. It jars somewhat upon our imagina- 
tion of the even run of that holy calling, to think of 
the parson (like Sydney Smith) proudly producing 
his lemon-bag, or devising his patent Tantalus and 
his universal scratcher. But surely all this is a wrong 
view of things. Surely it is Platonism rather than 
Christianity to hold that there is anything necessarily 
debasing or materialising about the cares of daily life. 
All these cares take their character from the spirit 
with which we pass through them. The simple French 
monk, five hundred years since, who acted as cook to 
his brethren, indicated the clergyman's true path when 
he wrote, ' I put my little egg-cake on the fire, for the 
sake of Christ ;' and George Herbert, more gracefully, 
has shewn how, as the eye may either look 07i glass, 
or look through it, we may look no further than the 
daily task, or may look through it to something nobler 

beyond : 

Teach me, my God and King, 

In all things Thee to see : 
And what I do in anything, 

To do it as for Thee. 



1 90 Country Houses and 

A servant with this clause 

Makes drudgery divine : 
Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws, 

Makes that, and the action, fine. 

We have all in our mind some abstracted and ideal- 
ised picture of what the country parsonage, as well as 
the country parson, should be : the latter, the clergy- 
man and the gentleman : the former, the fit abode for 
him and his ; near the church, not too much retired 
from the public way, old and ivied, of course Gothic, 
with bay windows, fantastic gables, wreathed chimneys, 
and overhanging eaves ; with many evergreens, with 
ancient trees, with peaches ripening on the sunny 
garden wall ; with an indescribable calm and peace- 
fulness over the whole, deepened by the chime of the 
passing river, and the windy caw of the distant 
rookery ; such should the country parsonage be. But 
the best of anything is not the commonest of the 
class : and I can only add that I believe it would 
afford unmingled satisfaction to the tenant of rectory, 
vicarage, parsonage, deanery, or manse, if his dwelling 
were all that the writer would wish to see it. 

It is pleasant to think over what we may call the 
poetry of country house-making, — the historical cases 
in which men have sought to idealise to the utmost the 
scene around them, and to live in a more ambitious 
or a humbler fairyland. Yet the instances that first 



Country Life. 191 

occur to us do not encourage the belief that happiness 
is more certainly to be found in fairyland than in Man- 
chester or in Siberia. One thinks of Beckford, the 
master of almost unlimited wealth, ' commanding his 
fairy palace to glitter amid the orange groves, and 
aloes, and palms of Cintra : ' and after he had fonned 
his paradise, wearying of it, and abandoning it, to 
move the gloomy moralising of CJiilde Harold. One 
thinks of him, not yet content with his experience, 
spending twenty years upon the turrets and gardens 
of Fonthill, that ' cathedral turned into a toyshop ; ' 
whose magnificence was yet but a faint and distant 
attempt to equal the picture drawn by the prodigal 
imagination of the author of Vathek. One thinks of 
Horace Walpole, amid the gimcrackery of Straw- 
berry Hill ; of Sir Walter Scott, building year by year 
that ' romance in stone and lime,' and idealising the 
bleakest and ugliest portion of the banks of the Tweed, 
till the neglected Clartyhole became the charming 
but costly Abbotsford. One thinks of Shenstone, de- 
voting his life to making a little paradise of the 
Leasowes, where, as Johnson tells us in his grand 
resounding prose, he set himself ' to point his pro- 
spects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, 
and to wind his waters ; which he did with such judg- 
ment and fancy as made his little domain the envy of 
the great and the admiration of the skilful ; a place 



192 Country Houses and 

to be visited by travellers and copied by designers.' 
Nor must we forget how the bitter little Pope, by the 
taste with which he laid out his five acres at Twicken- 
ham, did much to banish the stiff Dutch style, and to 
encourage the modern fashion of landscape-gardening 
in imitation of nature, which was so successfully carried 
out by the well-known Capability Brown. It is putting 
too extreme a case, when we pass to that which in 
our boyish days we all thought the perfection and de- 
light of country residences, the island-cave of Robin- 
son Crusoe : with its barricade of stakes which took 
root and grew into trees, and its impenetrable wilder- 
ness of wood, all planted by the exile's hand, which 
went down to the margin of the sea. It is coming 
nearer home, to pass to the French chateau ; the tower 
perched upon the rock above the Rhine ; and the 
German castle, which of course is somewhere in the 
Black Forest, frequented by robbers and haunted by 
ghosts. And we ascend to the sublime in human 
abodes, when we think of the magnificent Alhambra, 
looking down proudly upon Moorish Granada : that 
miracle of barbaric beauty, which Washington Irving has 
so finely described : with its countless courts and halls, 
its enchanted gateways, its graceful pillars of marble 
of different hues, and its fountains that once made 
cool music for the delight of Moslem prince and peer. 
We pass, by an easy transition, to the Hterature of 



Country Life. 193 

country houses, of which there are two well-marked 
classes. We have the real and the ideal schools of 
the literature of country houses and country life : or 
perhaps, as both are in a great deal ideal, we should 
rather call them the would-be real, and the avowedly 
romantic. We have the former charmingly exempli- 
fied in Braccbridge Hall; charmingly in the Spectator's 
account of Sir Roger de Coverley, amid his primitive 
tenantry ; with a little characteristic coarseness, in 
Swift's poem, beginning, 

I've often wish'd that I had clear, 
For life, six hundred pounds a year, — 

which, by the way, is an imitation of that graceful 
Latin poet who delighted, so many centuries since, in 
his little Sabine farm. Then there are Miss Mitford's 
quiet pleasing delineations of English country life ; 
many delightful touches of it in Friends in Council 
and its sequel ; and Samuel Rogers, though essentially 
a man of the town, has given a very complete picture 
of cottage life in his little poem, which thus sets out — 

Mine be a cot beside the hill ; 
A beehive's hum shall soothe my ear : 
A willowy brook, that turns a mill, 
With many a fall, shall linger near. 

AVe mention all these, not, of course, as a thou- 
sandth part of what our literature contains of country 
houses and life, but as a sample of that mode of 
o 



194 



Country Hotiscs and 



treating these subjects which we have termed the 
would-be real : and as specimens of the avowedly 
romantic way of describing such things, we refer to 
Poe's gorgeous picture of the * Domain of Arnheim,' 
where his affluent imagination has run riot, under the 
stimulus of fancied boundless wealth ; and the same 
author's ' Landor's Cottage,' a scene of sweet simpli- 
city, which is somewhat spoiled by just the smallest 
infusion of the theatrical. The writings of Poe, with all 
their extraordinary characteristics, are so little known 
in this country, that we dare say our readers will feel 
obliged to us for a short account of the former piece. 

A certain man, named Ellison, suddenly came into 
the possession of a fortune of a hundred millions 
sterling. Poe, you see, being \vretchedly poor, did 
not do things by halves. Ellison resolved that he 
would find occupation and happiness in making the 
finest place in the world ; and he made it. The ap- 
proach to Arnheim was by the river. After intricate 
windings, pursued for some hours through wild chasms 
and rocks, the vessel suddenly entered a circular basin 
of water, of two hundred yards' diameter : this basin 
was surrounded by hills of considerable height : — 



Their sides sloped from the water's edge at an angle of 
some forty-five degrees, and they were clothed from base 
to summit, not a perceptible point escaping, in a drapeiy 
of the most gorgeous flower-blossoms : scarcely a green 



Country Life. 195 

leaf being visible among the sea of odorous and fluctuat- 
ing colour. This basin was of great depth, but so trans- 
parent was the water that the bottom, which seemed to 
consist of a thick mass of small round alabaster pebbles, 
was distinctly visible by glimpses, — that is to say, when- 
ever the eye could permit itself not to see, far down in the 
inverted heaven, the duplicate blooming of the hills. On 
these latter there were no trees, nor even shrubs of any 

size As the eye traced upwards the myriad-shaped 

slope, from its sharp junction with the water to its vague 
termination amid the folds of overhanging cloud, it be- 
came, indeed, difficult not to fancy a panoramic cataract 
of rubies, sapphires, opals, and golden onyxes, rolling 
silently out of the sky. 

Here the visitor quits the vessel which has borne 
him so far, and enters a light canoe of ivory, which is 
wafted by unseen machinery : — 

The canoe steadily proceeds, and the rocky gate of the 
vista is approached, so that its depths can be more dis- 
tinctly seen. To the right arise a chain of lofty hills 
rudely and luxuriantly wooded. It is observed, however, 
that the trait of exquisite cleanness where the bank dips 
into the water still prevails. There is not one token of 
the usual river debris. To the left, the character of the 
scene is softer and more obviously artificial. Here the 
bank slopes upward from the stream in a very gentle 
ascent, forming a broad sward of grass of a texture re- 
sembling nothing so much as velvet, and of a brilliancy 
of green which would bear coinparison with the tint of the 
purest emerald. This plateau varies in breadth from ten 
to three hundred yards ; reaching from the river bank to 



196 Country Houses and 

a wall, fifty feet high, which extends in an infinity of 
curves, but following the general direction of the river, 
until lost in the distance to the westward. This wall is 
of one continuous rock, and has been formed by cutting 
perpendicularly the once rugged precipice of the stream's 
southern bank ; but no trace of the labour has been suf- 
fered to remain. The chiselled stone has the hue of ages, 
and is profusely hung and overspread with the ivy, the 

coral honeysuckle, the eglantine, and the clematis 

Floating gently onward, the voyager, after many short 
turns, finds his progress apparently barred by a gigantic 
gate, or rather door, of burnished gold, elaborately carved 
and fretted, and reflecting the direct rays of the now sink- 
ing sun with an effulgence that seems to wreathe the 
whole surrounding forest in flames The canoe ap- 
proaches the gate. Its ponderous wings are slowly and 
musically unfolded. The boat glides between them, and 
commences a rapid descent into a vast amphitheatre en- 
tirely begirt with purple mountains, whose bases are laved 
by a gleaming river throughout the full extent of their 
circuit. Meantime the whole Paradise of Arnheim bursts 
upon the view. There is a gush of entrancing melody: 
there is an oppressive sense of strange sweet odour : there 
is a dream-like intermingling to the eye of tall, slender 
Eastern trees, — bosky shrubberies, — flocks of golden and 
crimson birds, — lily-fringed lakes, — meadows of violets, 
tulips, poppies, hyacinths, and tuberoses, — long inter- 
tangled lines of silver streamlets, — and, upspringing con- 
fusedly from amid all, a mass of semi-Gothic, semi- Sara- 
cenic architecture, sustaining itself as if by miracle in 
mid-air, — glittering in the red sunlight with a hundred 
oriels, minarets, and pinnacles ; and seeming the phantom 



Country Life. 197 

handiwork, conjointly, of the Sylphs, the Fairies, the 
Genii, and the Gnomes.* 

This is certainly landscape-gardening on a grand 
scale : but the whole thing is a shade too imme- 
diately suggestive of the Arabian Nights. Why not, 
we are disposed to say, go the entire length of Alad- 
din's palace at once, and give us walls of alternate 
blocks of silver and gold ; gardens, whose trees bear 
fruits of diamond, emerald, ruby, and sapphire ; and 
a roc's egg hung up in the entrance-hall ? Fancy a 
man driving up in a post-chaise from the railway- 
station to a house like that ! Why, the only permis- 
sible way of arriving at its front door would be on an 
enchanted horse, that has brought one from Bagdad 
through the air ; and instead of a footman in spruce 
livery coming out to take in one's portmanteau, I 
should look to be received by a porter with an ele- 
phant's head, or an afrit with bat's wings. I could not 
go up comfortably to my room to dress for dinner : 
and only fancy coming down to the drawing-room in 
a coat by Stultz and dress boots by Hoby ! Rather 
should we wreathe our brow with flowers, endue a 
purple robe, the gift of Noureddin, and perfume our 
handkerchief with odours which had formed part of 
the last freight of Sinbad the Sailor. If we made any 

* Works of Edgar AllaJt Poe, vol. i. pp. 400-403. American Edition. 



198 Country Houses and 

remark, political or critical, which happened to be 
disagreeable to our host, of course he would imme- 
diately change us into an ape, and transport us a thou- 
sand leagues in a second to the Dry Mountains. 

But to return to the sober daylight in which ordi- 
nary mortals live, and to the sort of country in which 
a man may live whose fortune is less than a hundred 
millions, we have abundance of the literature of the 
country in one shape or another : poetry and poetic 
prose which profess to depict country life, and books 
of detail which profess to instruct us how to manage 
country concerns. We breathe a clear, cool atmo- 
sphere for which we are the better, when we turn 
over the pages of The Seasons : that is a book which 
never will become stale. Cowper's poetry is redolent 
of the country : and though it is all nonsense to say 
that ' God made the country and man made the town,' 
yet The Whiter Walk at Noon almost leads us to 
think so. You see the Cockney's fancy that the 
country is a paradise, always in holiday guise, in poor 
Keats's lines — 

Oh for a drop of vintage that hath been 
Cool'd for a long age in the deep-delved earth, 
Tasting of Flora and the country green, 
Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth ! 

And there are several books whose titles are sure to 
awaken pleasant thoughts in the mind of the lover of 



CoiinUy Life. 199 

nature, who knows that, notwithstanding Dr. Jolin- 
son's axiom, one green field is not just Hke any other 
green field, and who prefers a country lane to Fleet 
Street. There is Mr Jesse's Country Life, which is 
mainly occupied in describing, with a minute and 
kindly accuracy, the ways and doings of bird, beast, 
and insect ; and thus calling forth a feeling of interest 
in all our humble fellow-creatures ; for in the case of 
inferior animals the principle holds good, that all that 
is needed to make one like almost any of them is just 
to come to know them. And on this track one need 
do no more than name White's delightful Natural 
History of Selbourne. There is Mr. William Howitt's 
Bofs Country Book, which sets out the sports and 
occupations of childhood and rural scenes, with a ful- 
ness of sympathy which makes us lament that its 
author should ever exchange these genial topics for 
the briars of polemical controversy. There is Mr. 
Wilmott's Sufnmer-time in the Country ; a disappoint- 
ing book ; for notwithstanding the melody of its name, 
it is mainly a string of criticisms, good, bad, and in- 
different : with a slight surrounding atmosphere, in- 
deed, of country life ; but most of the production 
might have been written in Threadneedle Street. 
There is a pleasant and well-infonned little anony- 
mous volume, called T/ie Flower Garden, which con- 
tains the substance of two articles originally published 



200 Country Houses and Country Life. 

in the Quarterly Revietu ; and every one knows 
Bacon's Essay of Gardens^ in which the writer gives 
the reins to his fancy, and pictures out a Httle para- 
dise of thirty acres in extent, including in it some 
specimen of all schools of landscape-gardening. Mrs. 
Loudon's various publications have done much to 
foster a taste for gardening among ladies. An ex- 
ceedingly pleasing and genial book, called The Manse 
Garden, which has had a large circulation in Scotland, 
is intended to stimulate the Scottish clergy to neatness 
and taste in the arrangement of their gardens and 
glebes. A handsome work entitled Rustic Adornments 
for Homes of Taste, lately published, contains many 
practical instructions for the decoration of the coun- 
try home. And an elegantly-illustrated volume, which 
appeared a few months ago, is given to Rhymes and 
Roundelays in Praise of a Country Life. Sir Joseph 
Paxton has not thought it unworthy of him to write a 
little tract, called The Cottager's Calendar of Gardeji 
Operations, the purpose of which is to show how much 
may be done in the most limited space in the way of 
growing vegetables for profit and flowers for ornament ; 
and in these days, when happily the social and sani- 
tary elevation of the masses is beginning to attract 
something of the notice which it deserves, I tnist that 
reformers will not forget the powerful influence of the 
garden, and a taste for gardening concerns, in elevating 




DUMFRIES. 



and purifying the working man's mind, and adding inte- 
rest and beauty to the working man's home. And, in 
truth, we shall never succeed in inducing workingmen to 
spend their evenings at home rather than in the alehouse 
till we have succeeded in rendering their own homes 
tidy, comfortable, and inviting to a degree that shall at 
least equal the neatly-sanded floor and the well-scrubbed 
benches which they can enjoy for a few pence elsewhere. 
If there be any among my readers who have it in 



202 Country Houses and 

view to build a country house, I strongly recommend 
them to have it done by Mr. George Gilbert Scott, 
whose pleasantly-written book on Seaila?' and Do- 
mestic Architecture will be read with delight by many 
who are condemned to ^ive in towns, or who must put 
up with such a country home as their means permit, 
but who can luxuriate in imagining what kind of a 
house they would have if they could have exactly 
such a house as they wish. Mr. Scott is an out-and- 
out supporter of Gothic architecture as the best style 
for every possible building, large or small, in town or 
country, from the nobleman's palace to the labourer's 
cottage, from a cathedral or a town-house to a barn 
or a pigsty. But Mr. Scott gives a judicious view of 
Gothic architecture, as a style capable of unlimited 
expansion and adaptation, having in its nature the 
power to accommodate itself to every requirement of 
modern life and progress, and capable, without sur- 
rendering its distinctive character, of modification, 
development, addition, and subtraction, to a degree 
which renders it the true architecture of the nineteenth 
century no less than of the thirteenth. It is doing 
Gothic architecture great injustice to speak of it 
as the mediaeval architecture. Such a description 
vaguely suggests that it is a style especially suited 
to the requirements of life in the Middle Ages : and, 
by consequence, not well adapted to the exigencies 



Country Life. 203 

of life at a period when life is very different from 
what it was in the Middle Ages. And the notion has 
been countenanced by the injudicious fashion in 
which houses were built at the beginning of the great 
reaction in favour of Gothic. When people grew 
wearied and disgusted at the ugly Grecian houses 
which disfigure so many fine old English parks, paltry 
and pitiful importations of a foreign style into a 
country which had an indigenous style incomparably 
superior in beauty, in comfort, in every requisite of 
the country house, the reaction ran into excess ; and 
instead of building Gothic houses, that is, instead of 
trying to produce buildings which should be noble 
and picturesque, and at the same time commodious 
and convenient to live in, architects built abbeys 
and castles ; and in those cases where they did not 
produce specimens of mere confectioners' Gothic, they 
produced buildings utterly unsuited to the exigencies 
and conditions of modern English life, however beau- 
tiful they might be. Now, nothing could be a more 
flagrant violation of the spirit of Gothic, than this 
scrupulous confomiity to the letter of Gothic. The true 
Gothic architect must hold fitness and use in view 
as his primary end ; and his skill is shown when upon 
these he superinduces beauty. A fortified castle, with 
moat and drawbridge, arrow-slits, and donjon-keep, was 
a convenient and suitable building in an unsettled and 




CARNARVON CASTLE. 



lawless age. It is a most inconvenient and unsuitable 
building in England in the nineteenth century ; and 
while we should prize and cherish the noble specimens 
of the Edwardian castle which we possess, for their 
beauty and their associations, we ought to remember 
that if the architects who built them were living now, 
they would be the first to lay their style aside, as no 
longer suitable ; and they would show the true Gothic 
taste and spirit in devising dwellings as noble, as 
picturesque, as interesting, as thoroughly Gothic in 



Country Houses and Country Life. 205 

character, but fitted for the present age, and the pre- 
sent age's modes of hfe. It was not because the 
Edwardian castle was grand and beautiful, that the 
Edwardian architects built it as they did ; they built 
it as they did because that was the most suitable and 
convenient fashion ; and upon fitness and use they 
engrafted grandeur and beauty. And it is not by a 
slavish imitation of ancient details and forms that we 
shall succeed in producing, at the present day, what is 
justly entitled to be called Gothic architecture. It is 
rather by a free development and carrying out of old 
principles applied to new circumstances and require- 
ments. And it is the glory of Gothic, that you cannot 
make a new demand upon it for increased or altered 
accommodations and ajDpliances, which may not, in 
the hand of a worthy architect, be complied with, not 
only without diminution of beauty, but even with 
increase of beauty. It is beyond comparison the 
most squeezable of all styles ; and, provided the 
squeezing be effected by a master's hand, the style 
will look all the better for it. 

There is a floating belief, entirely without reason, 
that Gothic is exclusively an ecclesiastical fashion of 
building. Many people fancy that Gothic architec- 
ture suits a church ; but is desecrated, or at least 
becomes unsuitable, when applied to secular and do- 
mestic buildings. There can be no doubt, indeed. 



2o6 Country Houses and 

that to every person who possesses any taste, it is a 
self-evident axiom that Gothic is the true church 
architecture : but in the age during which the noblest 
Gothic churches were built, it was never fancied that 
churches must be built in one style, and secular 
buildings in a style essentially dissimilar. The belief 
which is entertained by the true lover of Gothic 
architecture is this : that Gothic is essentially the 
most beautiful architecture ; that, properly treated, it 
is the most commodious architecture ; and that, there- 
fore, the Gothic is the style in which all buildings, 
sacred or secular, public or domestic, ought to be 
built ', with such modifications in the style of each 
separate building as its special purpose and use shall 
suggest. It must be admitted, however, that Gothic 
architecture has one disadvantage as compared with 
that architecture which is exhibited in Baker Street, in 
the London suburban terraces, and in the Manchester 
cotton-mills. Gothic architecture costs more money ; 
but, in judicious hands, not so very much more. 

As to the capacity of Gothic architecture to accom- 
modate itself to houses of all classes, let the reader 
ponder the following words : — 

It seems to be generally imagined that the merits of the 
Elizabethan style are most displayed in its grand baronial 
residences, such as Burleigh or Hatfield. I think quite 
the contrary. A style is best tested by reducing it to its 
humblest conditions ; and the great glory of this style is, 



Country Life. 207 

not that it produced gorgeous and costly mansions for the 
nobles, but that it produced beautifully simple, yet per- 
fectly architectural, cottages for the poor ; appropriate and 
comfortable farmhouses ; and pleasant-looking residences 
for the smaller country-gentlemen, and for the inhabitants 
of country towns and villages. 

Following up the same idea, Mr. Scott somewhere 
else says : — 

What we want is a style which will stand this test, which 
will be pleasing in its most normal forms, yet be suscep- 
tible of every gradation of beauty, till it reach the noblest 
and most exalted objects to which art can aspire. 

Let it be accepted as an indubitable axiom, that 
Gothic building is the best building for the town as 
well as for the country. But I am not called to enter 
upon that controversial ground, for we are dealing with 
country houses, in regard to which I believe there is no 
difference of opinion among people of taste and sense. 
The country house, as of course, must be Gothic. 
Tasteless blockheads will no doubt say that the Gothic 
house is all frippery and gingerbread, (as indeed houses 
of confectioners' Gothic very often are ;) they will 
chuckle with delight whenever they hear that the rain 
has penetrated where the roof of a bay-window joins 
the Avail, or through some ill-contrived gutter in the 
irregular roof of the house ; they will maintain, in the 
face of fact, that Gothic windows will not admit suffi- 
cient light, and cannot exclude draughts ; and they 



2o8 Country Houses and 

will praise the unpretending square built house ' with 
no nonsense about it' Let us leave such tasteless 
people to the contemplation of the monstrosities they 
love : when the question is one of grace or beauty, 
their opinion is (as Coleridge used to say) 'neither 
here nor there.' Granting (which we do not grant) 
that Gothic architecture is out of place in the town, 
and congenial and suitable in the country, I do not 
know that we could pay to that style any higher tribute 
than to say that it is the most seemly and suitable to 
be placed in conjunction with the fairest scenes of 
nature. I do not think we could say better of any 
work of man, than that it bears with advantage to be 
set side by side with the noblest works of God. Yet, 
though a worthy Gothic building looks beautiful any- 
where, it has a special charm in a sweet country land- 
scape. It seems just what was wanted to render the 
scene perfect. It is in harmony with the trees and 
flowers and hills around, and with the blue sky over- 
head. It is a perpetual pleasure to look at it. I do 
not believe that any mortal can find real enjoyment in 
standing and gazing at a huge square house, with a 
great waggon roof, and with square holes cut in a great 
level blank wall for windows. It may draw a certain 
grandeur from vast size : and it may possess fine ac- 
cessories, — be shadowed by noble trees, backed by 
wild or wooded hills, and shaded offixAa the fields and 



Country Life. 209 

lawns by courtly terraces ; but the big square box is in 
itself ugly, and never can be anything but ugly. But 
how long and delightedly one can contemplate the 
worthy Ciothic house of similar pretension — with its 
lights and shadows, its irregular sky-line, its great 
mullioned bay-windows and its graceful oriels perched 
aloft, its many gables, its wreathed chimneys, its towers 
and pinnacles, its hall and chapel boldly shewn on the 
external outline: — for the characteristic of Gothic 
is, that it frankly exhibits construction, and makes a 
beauty of the exhibition ; while the square-box archi- 
tecture aims at concealing construction, — producing 
the four walls, pierced with the regular rows of windows, 
quite irrespective of internal requirements, and then 
considering how to fit in the requisite apartments, like 
the pieces of a child's dissected puzzle, into the square 
case made for them. Then Gothic admits, and indeed 
invites, the use of external colouring : and if ///it/ were 
only accomplished by the judicious employment of 
those bricks of different colours which have lately been 
brought to great perfection, the charm which the entire 
building possesses to please the eye is indefinitely in- 
creased. Only let it be remembered by every man who 
builds a Gothic country house, that it must be built with 
much taste and judgment. Gothic is an ambitious 
style ; and it is especially so in the present state of 
feeling in England with regard to it. We do not think 
p 



2IO Coimtry Houses and 

of criticising a common square house. The taste is 
never called into play when we look at it. It is taken 
for granted, a priori, that it must be ugly. Not so 
with a Gothic house. There is a pretension about 
that. The Gothic house invites us to look at it ; and, 
of course, to form an opinion of it. And therefore, if 
it be ugly, it is offensively ugly. It aims high, and it 
must expect severity in case of failure. The square- 
box house conies forward humbly : it is a goose, and 
does not pretend to fly. And even a goose is respect- 
able while it keeps to its own line. But the ugly 
Gothic house is a goose that hath essayed the eagle's 
flight ; and if it come down ignominiously to the earth, 
it is deservedly laughed at. And so, let no man pre- 
sume to build a country house without securing the ser- 
vices of a thoroughly good architect. And for myself 
I can say, that whenever I grow a rich man and build 
a Gothic house, the architect shall be Mr. Scott. In- 
deed a person of moderate means would be safe in 
seeking the advice of that accomplished gentleman : 
for he would, it is evident, take pains to render even 
a very small house a pleasing picture. He holds that 
a building of the smallest extent affords as decided if 
not as abundant scope for fine taste and careful treat- 
ment as the grandest baronial dwelling in Britain. A 
cottage may be quite as pretty and pleasing as a castle 
or a palace could be in their more ambitious style. 



Country Life. 211 

Although Gothic architecture has an unhmited 
capacity of adapting itself to all circumstances and 
exigencies, yet there is a freedom about a country 
site which suits it bravely. In the country the archi- 
tect is not hampered by want of space : he is not tied 
to a street-line beyond which he must not project, nor 
fettered by municipal regulations as to the height or 
sky-outline of his building. He may spread over as 
much ground as he pleases. And the only restrictions 
by which he is confined are thus set out by Mr. Scott, 
in terms which will commend themselves to the com- 
mon sense of all readers : — 

The grand principle of planning is, that every room 
should be in its right position — both positively and rela- 
tively to each other — to the approaches, views, and aspect ; 
and that this should be so eftected as not only to avoid 
disturbing architectural beauty, cither within or without, 
but to be in the highest degree conducive to it. 

In treating of Buildbigs in the Country^ Mr. Scott 
gives us some account of his ideal of houses suited to 
all ranks and degrees of men. Let us look at his 
picture of what a villa ought to be : — 

To begin, then, with the ordinary villa. Its characteris- 
tics should be quiet cheerfulness and unpretending com- 
fort ; it should, both within and without, be the very 
embodiment of innocent and simple enjoyment. No 
foolish affectation of rusticity, but the reality of everything 
which tends to the appreciation of country pleasures in 



212 Country Houses and 

their more refined form. The external design should so 
unite itself with the natural objects around, that they 
should appear necessary to one another, and that neither 
could be very different without the other suffering. The 
architecture should be quiet and simple ; the material 
that most suited to the neighbourhood — rneither too formal 
and highly finished, nor yet too rustic. The interior 
should partake of the same general feeling. It should 
bear no resemblance to the formality of a town house ; 
the rooms should be moderate in height, and not too 
rigidly regular in form ; some of the ceilings should shew 
their timbers wholly or in part ; some of the windows 
should, if it suits the position, open out upon the garden 
or into conservatories. In most situations the house 
should spread wide rather than run up high ; but circum- 
stances may vary this. 

I ask my readers' attention to the paragraph which 
follows ; it contains sound social philosophy : — 

In this, as in other classes of house-building, the ser- 
vants' apartments should be well cared for. They should 
be allowed a fair share in the enjoyments provided for 
their masters. I have seen houses replete with comfort 
and surrounded with beauty, where, when you once get 
into the servants' rooms, you might as well be in a prison. 
This is morally wrong ; let us give our dependents a share 
in our pleasures, and they will serve us none the less 
efficiently for it. 

Every one can see how pleasant and cheerful a 
home a villa would be which should successfully em- 
body Mr. Scott's views of what a villa ought to be. 



Country Life. 213 

Such a dwelling would be quite within the reach of 
all who possess such a measure of income as in this 
country now-a-days will suffice to provide those things 
which are the necessaries of life to people brought up 
as ladies and gentlemen. And with what heart and 
vigour a man would set himself to laying out the 
little piece of land around his house — to making 
walks, planting clumps of evergreens, and perhaps 
leading a little brooklet through his domain — if the 
house, seen from every point, were such as to be a 
perpetual feast to the eye and the taste ! I heartily 
wish that the poorest clergyman in Britain had just 
such a parsonage as Mr. Scott has depicted, and the 
means of living in it without undue pinching and 
paring. 

Then, leaving the villa, Mr. Scott points out with 
great taste and moderation what the cottage should 
be. Judiciously, he does not aim at too much. It 
serves no good end to represent the beau-ideal cottage 
as a building so costly to erect and to maintain, that 
landlords of ordinary means get frightened at the men- 
tion of so expensive a toy. Cottages may be built 
so as to be very tasteful and pleasing, while yet the 
expense of their erection is so moderate that labourers 
tolerably well off can afford to pay such a rent for 
them as shall render their erection by no means 
an unprofitable investment of money. Not, indeed, 



214 Country Houses and 

that a landlord who feels his responsibility as he 
ought, will ever desire to screw a profit out of his 
cottagers ; but it is well that it should be known that 
it need not entail any loss whatever to provide for the 
working class in the country, dwellings in which the 
requirements of comfort and decency shall be fulfilled. 
The merest touch from an artistic hand is often all 
that is needed to convert an ugly, though comfortable, 
cottage into a pretty and comfortable one. A cottage 
built of flint, dressed and reticulated with brick, Avith 
wood frames and mullions, and the gables of tim- 
ber, will look exceedingly pleasing. Even of such 
inexpensive material as mud, thatched with reeds, a 
very pretty cottage may be built. The truth is, that 
nowhere is taste so much needed as in building with 
cheap materials. A good architect will produce a 
building which will form a pleasing picture, at as small 
a cost as it is possible to enclose a like space from the 
external air in the very ugliest way. Gracefulness of 
form adds nothing to the cost of material. And there 
is scope for the finest taste in disposing the very 
cheapest materials in the most effective and graceful 
fashion. I have seen a church (built, indeed, by a 
first-rate architect) which was a beautiful picture, both 
without and within, while yet it cost so little, that I 
should (if I were a betting man) be content to lay 
any odds that no mortal could produce a building 



Country L ifc. 2 1 5 

which would protect an equal number of people from 
the weather for less money, though with unlimited 
licence as to ugliness. 

The material mud is one's ideal of the very shab- 
biest material for building which is within human 
reach. Hovel is the word that naturally goes with 
niiid. Yet Mr. Scott once built a large parsonage, 
which cost between two and three thousand pounds, 
of mud, thatched with reeds. AVarmth was the end in 
view. I have no doubt the parsonage proved a most 
picturesque and quaint affair ; and if I could find out 
where it is, I would go some distance to see it. 

Having given us his idea of what a country villa 
and a country cottage ought to be, Mr. Scott proceeds 
to set out his ideal of the home of the nobleman or 
great landed proprietor : — 

The proper expressions for a country mansion of the 
higher class — the residence of a landed proprietor — beyond 
that degree of dignity suited to the condition of the owner, 
are, perhaps, first, a friendly, unforbidding air, giving the 
idea of a kind of patriarchal hospitahty ; a look that 
seems to invite approach rather than repel it. Secondly, 
an air which appears to connect it with the history of the 
country, and a style which belongs to it. Thirdly, a 
character which harmonises well with the surrounding 
scenery, and unites itself with it, as if not only were the 
best spot chosen for the house, and its natural beauties 
fostered and increased so as to render this the central 
focus, but further, that the house itself should seem to be 



2i6 Country Houses and 

the very thing which was necessary to give the last touch 
and finish to the scene — the object for which nature had 
prepared the site, and without which its charms would be 
incomplete. 

It is not too much to say that a very great propor- 
tion of the more ambitious dwellings of this country 
signally fail of coming up to these conditions, and 
serve only to disfigure the beautiful parks in which 
they stand. A huge Palladian house entirely lacks 
the genial, hearty, inviting look of the Elizabethan or 
Gothic house. Instead of having a look of that hos- 
pitality and welcome which we are proud to think of 
as especially English, the Palladian mansion is merely 
suggestive, as Mr. Scott remarks, of gamekeepers and 
parkrangers on the watch to turn all intruders out. 
Our author would have the architect who is intrusted 
with the building of a house of this class retain in its 
design all that is practically useful and noble in the 
Elizabethan mansion — at the same time remembering 
that Elizabethan architecture is Gothic somewhat 
debased, and that its details, where faulty, should be 
set aside, and their place supplied by those of an 
earlier and purer period. Nor should it be forgotten 
that the purest and noblest Gothic is the most willing 
to bend itself to the requirements of altered circum- 
stances : and it is therefore needful that the architect, 
in forming his plan, should hold it steadily in view 



Country Life. 



217 



that he is building a house which is to be inhabited 
by a nobleman or gentleman of the latter half of the 
nineteenth century ; and which must therefore be 
thoroughly suited to the demands of our own day, 
and our own day's modes and habits of thought and 
life. And the castle and the abbey, though both 







VVVNDOW S COT. 



quite unfit to be taken as models out-and-out, may 
yet supi)ly hints for noble and dignified details in the 
designing of a modern English home. Thus, borrow- 
ing ideas from all quarters, Mr. Scott would produce a 
noble dwelling — strictly Gothic in design — thoroughly 
English in its entire character — at once majestic and 
comfortable — at once dignified and inviting — with a 
mediaeval nobility of aspect, and with the reality of 
every arrangement which our advanced civilisation 
and increased refinement can require or suggest. As 
for lesser details, is there not something in the following 



2i8 Country Houses and 

passage which makes an architectural epicure's mouth 
water 1 — 

The chapel and corridors perhaps richly vaulted in 
stone — the hall nobly roofed with oak — the ceilings of the 
rooms either boldly shewing their timbers, partially or 
throughout, or richly panelled with wood ; or if plastered, 
treated genuinely and truthfully, without aping ideas bor- 
rowed from other materials ; the floors of halls and pas- 
sages paved with stone, tile, inarble, enriched with incised 
or tesselated work, or a union of all ; those of the leading 
apartments of polished oak and parqueterie (the render- 
ing of mosaic into wood) ; rich wainscoting used where 
suitable, and the woodwork throughout honestly treated, 
and of character proportioned to its position, not neglect- 
ing the use of inlaying in the richer woods ; marble 
liberally used in suitable positions, the plainer kinds inlaid 
and studiously contrasted with the richer ; the coloured 
decorations, whether of walls or ceilings, or in stained 
glass, delicately and artistically treated, and of the highest 
art we can obtain, and everywhere proportioned to their 
position ; historical and fresco painting freely used, and in 
a style at once suited to the architecture, and thoroughly 
free from what may be called medijevalism, in the sense 
in which the term is misused to imply an antiquated, 
grotesque, or imperfect mode of drawing ; all of these, 
and an infinity of other modes of ornamentation, are open 
to the architect in this class of building. 

It is pleasant to read well-written descriptions of 
human dwellings in which art has done all it can do 
towards providing a pleasant and beautiful setting for 



Country L ife. 2 1 9 

human life. Such is Mr. Loudon's account of what 
he calls the beau-ideal English Villa, in his Cyclopccdia 
of Rural Architecture. Such is Mr. Scott's sketch of 
the beau-ideal of a nobleman's house at the present 
day. The latter forms a pleasing companion picture 
to that long since drawn by the affluent imagination 
of Bacon. All who have a taste for such things will 
read it with great delight ; nor will it tend in the 
least degree to make the true lover of the country 
envious or discontented. I can turn with perfect 
satisfaction from that grand description to my own 
little parsonage. There is a peculiar comfort and 
interest about a little place, which vanishes with 
increasing magnitude and magnificence. And it is a 
law of all healthy minds, that what is one's own has 
an attraction for one's self far beyond that possessed 
by much finer things which belong to another. A 
man with one little country abode, may have more 
real delight in it than a duke has in his wide 
demesnes. Indeed I heartily pity a duke with half-a- 
score of noble houses. He can never have a home 
feeling in any one of them. While the possessor of a 
few acres knows every corner and every tree and 
shrub in his little realm ; and knows what is the 
aspect of each upon every day of the year. I speak 
from experience. I am the possessor of twelve acres 
of mother earth ; and I know well what pleasure and 



220 Country Houses mid 

interest are to be found in the little affairs of that 
limited tract. My study-window looks out upon a 
corner of the garden ; a blank wall faces it at a 
distance of five-and-twenty feet. When I came here, 
I found that corner sown with potatoes, and that wall 
a dead expanse of stone and mortar. But I resolved 
to make the most of my narrow view, and so contrive 
that it should look cheerful at every season. And 
now the corner is a little square of as soft and well- 
shaven green turf as can be seen ; through which 
snowdrops and crocuses peep in early spring ; its 
surface is broken by two clumps of evergreens, 
laurels, hollies, cedars, yews, which look warm and 
pleasant all tlie winter time ; and over one clump 
rises a standard rose of ten feet in height, which, as I 
look up from my desk through my window, shews 
like a crimson cloud in summer. The blank wall is 
blank no more, but beautiful with climbing roses, 
honeysuckle, fuchsias, and variegated ivy. What a 
pleasure it was to me, the making of this little 
improvement ; and what a pleasure it is still every 
time I look at it. No one can sympathise justly with 
the feeling till he tries something of the sort for him- 
self And not merely is such occupation as that 
which I speak of a most wholesome diversity from 
mental work. It has many other advantages. It 
leads to a more intelligent delight in the fairest works 



Country Life. 221 

of the Creator ; and though it might be hard to 
explain the logical steps of the process, it leads a man 
to a more kindly and sympathetic feeling towards all 
his fellow-men. Have 'not I, unfoithful that I am, 
spent the forenoon in writing a very sharp review of 
some foolish book ; and then, having gone out to the 
garden for two or three hours, come in, thinking that 
after all it would be cruel to give pain to the poor 
fellow who wrote it ; and so proceeded to weed out 
everything severe, and give the entire article a rather 
complimentary turn ? 

It is a vain fancy to try to sketch out the kind of 
life which is to be led in the country house after we 
get it. For almost every man gradually settles into 
a habitude of being which is rather formed by circum- 
stances than adopted of purpose and by choice. 
Only let it be remembered, that pleasure disappears 
when it is sought as an end. Happiness is a thing 
that is come upon incidentally, while we are looking 
for something else. The man who would enjoy 
country life in a country home, must have an earnest 
occupation besides the making and delighting in his 
home, and the sweet scenes which surround it. If 
that be all he has to do, he will soon turn weary, and 
find that life, and the interest of life, have stagnated 
and scummed over. The end of work is to enjoy 



222 Country Houses and Country Life. 

leisure ; but to enjoy leisure one must have performed 
work. It will not do to make the recreation of life 
the business of life. But I believe, that to the man 
who has a worthy occupation to fill up his busy hours, 
there is no purer or more happy recreation than may 
be found in the cares and interests of the country 
home. 





ii.vijLt: b Niii r. 



CHAPTER VI. 

CONCERNING TIDINESS. 

BEING THOUGHTS UPON AN OVERLOOKED SOURCE OF 
HUMAN CONTENT. 

SAID Sydney Smith to a lady who asked him to 
recommend a remedy for low spirits, — Always 
have a cheerful, bright fire, a kettle simmering on 



224 Tidiness. 

the hob, and a paper of sugar-phims on the mantel- 
piece. 

Modern grates, it is known, have no hobs : nor does 
it clearly appear for what purpose the kettle was re- 
commended. If for the production of frequent cups 
of tea, I am not sure that the abundant use of that 
somewhat nervous and vaporous liquid is likely to 
conduce to an equable cheerfulness. And Sydney 
Smith, although he must have become well acquainted 
with whisky-toddy during his years in Edinburgh, 
would hardly have advised a lady to have recourse 
to alcoholic exhilaration, with its perilous tendencies 
and its subsequent depression. Sugar-plums, again, 
damage the teeth, and produce an effect the reverse 
of salutary upon a most important organ, whose con- 
dition directly affects the spirits. As for the bright 
fire, thci-e the genial theologian was certainly right : 
for when we talk, as we naturally do, of a chee7'fid fire, 
we testify that long experience has proved that this 
peculiarly British institution tends to make people 
cheerful. But, without committing myself to any ap- 
proval of the particular things recommended by Sydney 
Smith, I heartily assent to the principle which is im- 
plied in his advice to the nervous lady : to wit, that 
cheerfulness and content are to a great degree the 
result of outward and physical conditions ; let me add, 
the result of very little things. 



Tidiness. 225 

Time was, in which happiness was regarded as 
being, perhaps, too much a matter of one's outward 
lot. Such is the behef of a primitive age and an 
untutored race. Every one was to be happy, what- 
ever his mental condition, who could but find admit- 
tance to Rasselas's Happy Valley. The popular belief 
that there might be a scene so fair that it would make 
blest any human being who should be allowed to 
dwell in it, is strongly shewn in the name universally 
given to the spot which was inhabited by the parents 
of the race before evil was known. It was the Garden 
of Delight: and the name describes not the beauty 
of the scene itself, but the effect it would produce 
upon the mind of its tenants. The paradises of all 
rude nations are places which profess to make every 
one happy who enters them, quite apart from any 
consideration of the world which he might bear within 
his own breast. And the pleasures of these paradises 
are mainly addressed to sense. The gross Esquimaux 
went direct to eating and drinking : and so his heaven 
(if we may believe Dr. Johnson) is a place where ' oil 
is always fresh and provisions always warm.' He could 
conceive nothing loftier than the absence of cold meat, 
and the presence of unlimited blubber. Quite as gross 
was the paradise of the Moslem, with its black-eyed 
houris, and its musk-sealed wine : and the same prin- 
ciple, that the outward scene and circumstances in 
Q 



226 Tidiness. 

which a man is placed are able to make him perfectly 
and unfailingly happy, whatever he himself may be, is 
taken for granted in all we are told of the Scandi- 
navian Valhalla, the Amenti of the old Egyptian, the 
Peruvian's Spirit-World, and the Red Man's Land of 
Souls. But the Christian Heaven, with deeper truth, 
is less a locality than a character : its happiness being 
a relation between the employments provided, and the 
mental condition of those who engage in them. It 
was a grand and a noble thing, too, when a Creed 
came forth, which utterly repudiated the notion of a 
Fortunate Island, into which, after any life you liked, 
you had only to smuggle yourself, and all was well. 
It was a grand thing, and an intensely practical thing, 
to point to an unseen world, which will make happy 
the man who is prepared for it, and who is fit for it ; 
and no one else. 

And, to come down to the enjoyments of daily hfe, 
the time was when happiness was too much made a 
thing of a quiet home, of a comfortable competence, 
of climbing roses and honeysuckle, of daisies and but- 
tercups, of new milk and fresh eggs, of evening bells 
and mist stealing up from the river in the twilight, of 
warm firesides, and close-drawn curtains, and mellow 
lamps, and hissing urns, and cups of tea, and easy- 
chairs, and old songs, and plenty of books, and laugh- 
ing girls, and perhaps a gentle wife and a limited 



Tidiness. 227 

number of peculiarly well-behaved children. And 
indeed it cannot be denied that if these things, with 
health and a good conscience, do not necessarily make 
a man contented, they are very likely to do so. One 
cannot but sympathise with the spirit of snugness and 
comfort which breathes from Cowper's often-quoted 
lines, though there is something of a fallacy in them. 
Here they are again : they are pleasant to look at : — 

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, 
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, 
And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn 
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups, 
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, 
So let us welcome peaceful evening in. 

I have said there is a fallacy in these lines. It is 
not that they state anything which is not quite correct, 
but that they contain a si/ggcstio falsi. Although 
Cowper does not directly say so, you see he leaves 
on your mind the impression that if all these arrange- 
ments are made, — the fire stirred, the curtains drawn, 
the sofa wheeled round, and so forth, — you are quite 
sure to be extremely jolly, and to spend a remarkably 
pleasant evening. Now the fact is quite otherwise. 
You may have so much anxiety and care at your 
heart, as shall entirely neutralise the natural tendency 
of all these little bits of outward comfort ; and no one 
knew that better than the poor poet himself. But that 



which Cowper does but insinuate, an unknown verse- 
writer boldly asserts : to wit, that outward conditions 
are able to make a man as happy as it is possible for 
man to be. He writes in the style which was com- 
mon a couple of generations back : but he really 
makes a pleasant homely picture : — 

The hearth was clean, the fire was clear, 

The kettle on for tea ; 
Palemon in his elbow-chair, 

As blest as man could be. 
Clarinda, who his heart possess'd, 

And was his new-made bride. 
With head reclined upon his breast, 

Sat toying by his side. 
Stretch'd at his feet, in happy state, 

A favourite dog was laid. 
By whom a little sportive cat 

In wanton humour play'd. 
Clarinda's hand he gently press'd : 

She stole a silent kiss ; 
And, blushing, modestly confess'd 

The fulness of her bliss. 
Palemon, with a heart elate, 

Pray'd to Almighty Jove, 
That it might ever be his fate 

Just so to live and love. 
Be this eternity, he cried, 

And let no more be given ; 
Continue thus my loved fireside, — 

I ask no other heaven ! 



Tidiness. 



229 



Poor fellow ! It is very evident that he had not 
been married long. And it is charitable to attribute 
the wonderful extravagance of his sentiments to tem- 
porary excitement and obfuscation. But without say- 
ing anything of his concluding wish, which appears to 
border on the profane, we see in his verses the ex- 
pression of the rude belief that, given certain outward 
circumstances, a man is sure to be happy. 

Perhaps the pendulum has of late years swung rather 
too far in the opposite direction, and we have learned 
to make too little of external things. No doubt the 
true causes of happiness are ititer prcecordia. No 
doubt it touches us most closely, whether the world 
within the breast is bright or dark. No doubt con- 
tent, happiness, our being's end and aim, call it what 
you will, is an inward thing, as was said long ago by 
the Latin poet, in words which old Lord Auchinleck 
(the father of Johnson's Boswell) inscribed high on the 
front of the mansion which he built amid the Scottish 
woods and rocks ' where Lugar flows :' 

Quod petis, hie est ; 
Est Ulubris : animus si te non deficit sequus. 

But then the question is, how to get the a?timns 
(zquus : and I think that now-a-days there is with 
some a disposition to push the principle of 

My mind to me a kingdom is, 
too far. Happiness is indeed a mental condition, but 



230 Tidiness. 

we are not to forget that mental states are very 
strongly, very directly, and very regularly afifected and 
produced by outward causes. In the vast majority of 
men, outward circumstances are the great causes of 
inward feelings ; and you can count almost as certainly 
upon making a man jolly by placing him in happy 
circumstances, as upon making a man wet by dipping 
him in water. And I believe a life which is too sub- 
jective is a morbid thing. It is not healthy nor de- 
sirable that the mind's shadow and sunshine should 
come too much from the mind itself I believe that 
when this is so, it is generally the result of a weak 
physical constitution : and it goes along with a poor 
appetite and shaky nerves : and so I hail Sydney 
Smith's recommendation of sugar-plums, bright fires, 
and simmering kettles, as the recognition of the grand 
principle that mental moods are to a vast extent 
the result of outward conditions and of physical 
state. If Macbeth had asked Dr. Forbes Winslow 
the question — 

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased ? 
that eminent physician would instantly have replied, 
— ' Of course I can, by ministering to a body dis- 
eased.' No doubt such mental disease as Macbeth's 
is beyond the reach of opiate or purgative, and neither 
sin nor remorse can be cured by sugar-plums. But 
as for the little depressions and troubles of daily life. 



Tidiness. 231 

I believe that Sydney Smith proposed to treat them 
soundly. Treat them physically. Treat them ab 
extra. Don't expect the mind to originate much 
good for itself. With commonplace people it is mainly 
dependent upon external influences. It is not a peren- 
nial fountain, but a tank which must be replenished 
from external springs. For myself, I never found my 
mind to be to me a kingdom. If a kingdom at all, 
it was a very sterile one, and a very unruly one. I 
have generally found myself, as my readers have no 
doubt sometimes done, a most wearisome and stupid 
companion. If any man wishes to know the conse- 
quence of being left to his own mental resources, let 
him shut himself up for a week, without books or 
writing materials or companions, in a chamber lighted 
from the roof He will be very sick of himself before 
the week is over : he will (I speak of commonplace 
men) be in tolerably low spirits. The effect of 
solitary confinement, we know, upon uneducated 
prisoners, is to drive them mad. And not only do 
outward circumstances mainly make and unmake our 
cheerfulness, but they affect our intellectual poAvers 
just as powerfully. They spur or they dull us. Till 
you enjoy, after long deprivation, the blessing of con- 
verse with a man of high intellect and cultivation, 
you do not know how much there is in you. Your 
powers are stimulated to produce thought of which 



-^^^ 







HEATHER. 



you would not have believed yourself capable. And 
have not you felt, dear reader, when in the society of 
a blockhead, that you became a blockhead too 1 Did 
you not feel your mind sensibly contracting, like a ball 
of india-rubber, when compressed by the dead weight 
of the surrounding atmosphere of stupidity ? But when 
you had a quiet evening with your friend Dr. Smith, or 
Mr. Jones, a brilliant talker, did not he make you talk 
too with (comparative) brilliancy 1 You found yourself 
saying much cleverer things than you had been able 



Tidiness. 233 



to say for months past. The machinery of your mind 
played fervidly; words came fittingly, and thoughts 
came crowding. The friction of two minds of a supe- 
rior class will educe from each much finer thought 
than either could have produced when alone. 

And now, my friendly reader, the upshot of all this 
which I have been saying is, that I desire to recom- 
mend to you a certain overlooked and undervalued 
thing, which I believe to be a great source of content 
and a great keeper-off of depression. I desire to 
recommend something which I think ought to sup- 
plant Sydney Smith's kettle and sugar-plums, and 
which may co-exist nicely with his cheerful fire. And 
I beg the reader to remark what the end is towards 
which I am to prescribe a means. It is not suprejna 
felicitas : it is quiet content. The happiness which 
we expect at middle age is a calm, homely thing. We 
don't want raptures : they weary us, they wear us out, 
they shatter us. We want quiet content ; and above 
all, we want to be kept clear of over-anxiety and of 
causeless depression. As for such buoyancy as that 
of Sydney Smith himself, who tells us that when a 
man of forty he often longed to jump over the tables 
and chairs in pure glee and light-heartedness, — why, if 
nature has not given you that, you must just do with- 
out it. Art cannot give it you : it must come spon- 
taneous if it come at all. But what a precious thing 



234 Tidiness. 

it is ! Very truly did David Hume say, that for a 
man to be born with a fixed disposition always to look 
at the bright side of things, was a far happier thing 
than to be born to a fortune of ten thousand a-year. 
But Hume was right, too, when he talked of being 
bom with such a disposition. The hopeful, unanxious 
man, quite as truly as the poet, nascitur^ nonfit. No 
training could ever have made the nervous, shrink- 
ing, evil-foreboding Charlotte Bronte like the gleeful, 
boisterous, life-enjoying Christopher North. There 
were not pounds enough in that little body to keep 
up a spirit like that which dwelt in the Scotch Pro- 
fessor's stalwart frame. And to indicate a royal road 
to constant light-heartedness is what no man in his 
senses will pretend to do. But we may attain to 
something humbler. Sober content is, I believe, 
within the reach of all who have nothing graver to vex 
them than what James Montgomery the poet called 
the 'insect cares' of daily life. There may be, of 
course, lots which are darkened over by misfortunes 
so deep that to brighten them all human skill would be 
unavailing. But ye who are commonplace people, — 
commonplace in understanding, in feeling, in circum- 
stances ; ye who are not very clever, not extraor- 
dinarily excitable, not extremely unlucky; ye who 
desire to be, day by day, equably content and even 
passably cheerful ; listen to me while I recommend, in 



Tidiness. 235 

subordination of course to something too serious to 
discuss upon this half-earnest page, the maintenance 
of a constant, pervading, active, all-reaching, energetic 
Tidiness ! 

No fire that ever blazed, no kettle that ever sim- 
mered, no sugar-plums that ever corroded the teeth 
and soothed to tranquil stupidity, could do half as 
much to maintain a human being in a condition of 
moderate jollity and satisfaction, as a daily resolute 
carrying out of the resolution, that everything about 
us, — our house, our wardrobe, our books, our papers, 
our study-table, our garden-walks, our carriage, our 
harness, our park-fences, our children, our lamps, our 
gloves, yea, our walking-stick and our umbrella, shall 
be in perfectly accurate order ; that is, shall be, to a 
hair's-breadth. Right ! 

If you, my reader, get up in the morning, as you 
are very likely to do in this age of late dinners, some- 
what out of spirits, and feeling (as boys expressively 
phrase it) rather doivn in the mouthy you cannot tell 
why ; if you take your bath and dress, having still the 
feeling as if the day had come too soon, before you 
had gathered up heart to face it and its duties and 
troubles ; and if, on coming down stairs, you find your 
breakfast-parlour all in the highest degree snug and 
tidy, — the fire blazing brightly and warmly, the fire- 
irons accurately aiTanged, the hearth clean, the carpet 



236 Tidiness. 

swept, the chairs dusted, the breakfast equipage neatly 
arranged upon the snow-white cloth, — it is perfectly 
wonderful how all this will brighten you up. You 
will feel that you would be a growling humbug if you 
did not become thankful and content. ' Order is 
Heaven's first law : ' and there is a sensible pleasure 
attending the carrying of it faithfully out to the very 
smallest things. Tidiness is nothing else than the 
carrying into the hundreds of little matters which meet 
us and touch us hour by hour the same grand prin- 
ciple which directs the sublimest magnitudes and 
affairs of the universe. Tidiness is, in short, the being 
right in thousands of small concerns in which most 
men are slovenly satisfied to be wrong. And though 
a hair's-breadth may make the difference between 
right and wrong, the difference between right and 
wrong is not a little difference. An untidy person is 
a person who is wrong, and is doing wrong, for several 
hours every day ; and though the wrong may not be 
grave enough to be indicated by a power so solemn 
as conscience, (as the current through the Atlantic 
cable after it had been injured, though a magnetic 
current, was too faint to be indicated by the machines 
now in use,) still, constant wrong-doing, in however 
slight a degree, cannot be without a jar of the entire 
moral nature. It cannot be without putting us out of 
harmony with the entire economy under which we 



Tidiness. 237 

live. And thus it is that the most particular old 
bachelor, or the most precise old maid, who insists 
upon everything about the house being in perfect 
order, is, in so far, co-operating with the great plan of 
Providence ; and, like every one who does so, finds 
an innocent pleasure result from that unintended har- 
mony. Tidiness is a great source of cheerfulness. It 
is cheering, I have said, even to come into one's 
breakfast-room and find it spotlessly tidy ; but still 
more certainly will this cheerfulness come if the tidi- 
ness is the result of our own exertion. 

And so I counsel you, my friend, if you are ever 
disheartened about some example which has been 
pressed upon you of the evil which there is in this 
world ; if you get vexed and worried and depressed 
about some evil in the government of your country, or 
of your county, or of your parish ; if you have done 
all you can to think how the evil may be remedied ; 
and if you know that further brooding over the subject 
would only vex and sting and do no good ; — if all 
this should ever be so, then I counsel you to have 
resort to the great refuge of Tidiness. Don't sit over 
your library fire, brooding and bothering ; don't fly to 
sugar-plums ; they will not avail. There is a corner 
of one of your fields that is grown up with nettles ; 
there is a bit of wall or of palisade out of repair ; 
there is a yard of the edging of a shrubbery walk 



238 Tidiness. 

where an overhanging laurel has killed the turf ; there 
is a bed in the garden which is not so scrupulously 
tidy as it ought to be ; there is a branch of a peach- 
tree that has pulled out its fastenings to the wall, and 
that is flapping about in the wind. Or there is a 
drawer of papers which has for weeks been in great 
confusion ; or a division of your bookcase where the 
books might be better arranged. See to these things 
forthwith : the out-of-door matters are the best. Get 
your man-servant — all your people, if you have half-a- 
dozen — and go forth and see things made tidy : and 
see that they are done thoroughly ; work half done 
will not serve for our present purpose. Let every 
nettle be cut down and carried off from the neglected 
corner ; then let the ground be dug up and levelled, 
and sown with grass seed. If it rains, so much the 
better : it will make the seed take root at once. Let 
the wall or fence be made better than when it was 
new ; let a wheelbarrowful of fresh green turf be 
brought ; let it be laid down in place of the decayed 
edging ; let it be cut accurately as a watch's machinery ; 
let the gravel beside it be raked and rolled : then put 
your hands in your pockets and survey the effect with 
delight. All this will occupy you, interest you, dirty 
you, for a couple of hours, and you will come in again 
to your library fireside quite hopeful and cheerful. The 
worry and depression will be entirely gone ; you will see 



Tidiness. 239 

your course beautifully : you have sacrificed to the good 
genius of Tidiness, and you are rewarded accordingly. 
I am simply stating phenomena, my reader. I don 't 
pretend to explain causes ; but I hesitate not to assert, 
that to put things right, and to know that things are 
put right, has a wonderful effect in enlivening and 
cheering. You cannot tell why it is so ; but you 
come in a very different man from what you Avere 
when you went out. You see things in quite another 
way. You wonder how you could have plagued your- 
self so much before. We all know that powerful 
effects are often produced upon our minds by causes 
which have no logical connexion with these effects. 
Change of scene helps people to get over losses 
and disappointments, though not by any process of 
logic. If the fact that Anna Maria cruelly jilted you, 
thus consigning you to your present state of single 
misery, was good reason why you should be snappish 
and sulky in Portland Place, is it not just as good rea- 
son now, when, in the midst of a tag-rag procession, 
you are walking into Chamouni after having climbed 
Mont Blanc ? The state of the facts remains precisely 
as before. Anna Maria is married to Mr. Dunder- 
head, the retired ironmonger with ten thousand a-year. 
Nor have any new arguments been suggested to you 
beyond those which Smith good-naturedly addressed 
to you in Lincoln's Inn Square, when you threatened 



240 Tidiness. 

to punch his head. But you have been up Mont 
Blanc ; you have nearly fallen into a crevasse ; your 
eyes are almost burned out of your head. You have 
looked over that sea of mountains which no one that 
has seen will ever forget : here is your alpen-stock, 
and you shall carry it home with you as an ancient 
palmer his faded branch from the Holy Land. And 
though all this has nothing earthly to do with your 
disappointment, you feel that somehow all this has 
tided you over it. You are quite content. You don't 
grudge Anna Maria her ferruginous happiness. You 
are extremely satisfied that things have turned out as 
they did. The sale of nails, pots, and gridirons is a 
legitimate and honourable branch of commercial en- 
terprise. And Mr. Dunderhead, with all that money, 
must be. a worthy and able man. 

I am writing, I need hardly say, for ordinary people 
when I suggest Tidiness as a constant source of tem- 
perate satisfaction. Of course great and heroic men 
are above so prosaic a means of content. Such 
amiable characters as Roderick Dhu, in the Lady of 
the Lake, as Byron's Giaour and Lara, not to name 
Childe Harold, as the heroes of Locksley Hall and 
Maud, and as Mr. Bailey's Festiis, would no doubt 
receive my humble suggestions very much as Mynheer 
Van Dunk, who disposed of his two quarts of brandy 



Tidiness. 



241 



daily, might be supposed to receive the advice to 
substitute for his favourite Hquor an equal quantity 
of skimmed milk. And possibly Mr. Disraeli would 
not be content out of office, however orderly and tidy 
everything about his estate and his mansion might be. 
Yet it is upon record that a certain ancient emperor, 
who had ruled the greatest empire this world ever 
saw, found it a pleasant change to lay the sceptre and 
the crown aside, and, descending from the throne, to 
take to cultivating cabbages. And as he looked at 
the tidy rows and the bunchy heads, he declared that 
he had changed his condition for the better ; that tidi- 
ness in a cabbage-garden could make a man happier 
than the imperial throne of the Roman empire. It is 
well that it should be so, as in this world there are 
many more cabbage-gardens than imperial thrones ; 
and tidiness is attainable by many by whom empire is 
not attainable. 

A disposition towards energetic tidiness is a peren- 
nial source of quiet satisfaction. It always provides 
us with something to think of and to do : it affords 
scope for a little ingenuity and contrivance : it carries 
us out of ourselves : and prevents our leading an un- 
healthily subjective life. It gratifies the instinctive 
love of seeing things right which is in the healthy 
human being. And it is founded upon the philoso- 
phical fact, that there is a peculiar satisfaction in 

R 



242 Tidiness. 

having a thing, great or small, which was wrong, put 
right. You have greater pleasure in such a thing, 
when it has been fairly set to rights, than if it never 
had been wrong. Had Brummell been a philosopher 
instead of a conceited and empty-pated coxcomb, I 
should at once have understood, when he talked of 
'his favourite leg,' that he meant a leg which had 
been fractured, and then restored as good as ever. Is 
it a suggestion too grave for this place, that this prin- 
ciple of the peculiar interest and pleasure which are 
felt in an evil remedied, a spoiled thing mended, a wrong 
righted, may cast some light upon the Divine dealing 
with this world % It is fallen, indeed, and evil : but it 
will be set right. And then, perhaps, it may seem 
better to its Almighty Maker than even on the First 
Day of Rest. And the human being who systemati- 
cally keeps right, and sets right, all things, even the 
smallest, within his own little dominion, enjoys a plea- 
sure which has a dignified foundation ; which is real, 
simple, innocent, and lasting. Never say that it is 
merely the fidgety particularity of an old bachelor 
which makes him impatient of suffering a weed or a 
withered leaf on his garden walk, a speck of dust on 
his library table, or a volume turned upside down on 
his shelves. He is testifying, perhaps unconsciously, 
to the grand, sublime, impassable difference between 
Right and Wrong. He is a humble combatant on 



Tidiness. 243 

the side of Right. He is maintaining a little outpost 
of the lines of that great army which is advancing 
with steady pace, conquering and to conquer. And 
if the quiet satisfaction he feels comes from an unex- 
citing and simple source — why, it is just from such 
sources that the quiet content of daily life must come. 
We cannot, from the make of our being, be always or 
be long in an excitement. Such things wear us and 
themselves out : and they cannot last, The really 
and substantially happy people of this world are 
always calm and quiet. In feverish youth, of course, 
young people get violently spoony, and are violently 
ambitious. Then^ life is to be all romance. They 
are to live in a world over which there spreads a light 
such as never was on land or sea. They think that 
Thekla was right when she said, as one meaning that 
life, for her, was done, ' I have lived and loved ! ' 
Mistaken she ! The solid work of life was then just 
beginning. She had just passed through the moral 
scarlet-fever ; and the noblest, greatest, and happiest 
part of life was to come. And as for the dream of 
ambition, that soon passes away. A man learns to work, 
not to make himself a famous name, but to provide 
the wherewithal to pay his butcher's and his grocer's 
bills. Still, who does not look back on that time with 
interest ? Was it indeed ourselves, now so sobered, 
grave, and matter-of-fact, whom we see as we look back? 



244 Tidiness. 

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife, 
When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my 

life; 
Yearning for the large excitement which the coming years 

would yield. 
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's 

field, 
And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer 

drawn, 
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary 

dawn. 

But just what London proves to the eager-hearted 
boy, life proves to the man. He intended to be Lord 
Chancellor : he is glad by and by to get made an 
Insolvent Commissioner. He intended to be a mil- 
lionaire : he is glad, after some toiling years, to be 
able to pay his house-rent and make the ends meet. 
He intended to startle the quiet district of his birth, 
and make his mother's heart proud with the story of 
his fame : he learns to be glad if he does his home 
no discredit, and can now and then send his sisters a 
ten-pound note : — 

So sleeps the pride of former days. 

So glory's thrill is o'er : 
And hearts that once beat high for praise. 

Now feel that pulse no more ! 

But though these excitements be gone, there still 
remains to the middle-aged man the calm pleasure of 



Tidiness. 245 

looking at the backs of the well-arranged volumes on 
his book -shelves ; of seeing that his gravel-walks are 
nicely raked, and his grass-plots smoothly mown ; of 
having his carriage, his horses, and his harness in 
scrupulous order ; the harness with the silver so very 
bright and the leather so extremely black, and the 
horses with their coats so shiny, their ribs so invisible, 
and all their comers so round. Now, my reader, all 
these little things will appear little only to very un- 
thinking people. From such little things comes the 
quiet content of commonplace middle life, of matter- 
of-fact old age. I never admired or liked anything 
about Lord Melbourne so much as that which I 
shall now tell you in much better words than my 
own : — 

He went one night to a minor theatre, in company with 
two ladies and a fashionable young fellow about town — a 
sort of man not easy to be pleased. 

The performance was dull and trashy enough, I daresay. 
The next day Lord Melbourne called upon the ladies. The 
fashionable young gentleman had been there before his 
lordship, and had been complaining of the dreadfully dull 
evening they had all passed. The ladies mentioned this 
to Lord Melbourne. ' Not pleased ! Not pleased ! Con- 
found the man ! Didn't he see the fishmongers' shops, 
and the gas-lights flashing from the lobsters' backs, as 
we drove along ? Wasn't that happiness enough for 
him?' 

Lord Melbourne had then ceased to be Prime Minister, 



246 Tidiness. 

but you see he had not ceased to take pleasure in any- 
little thing that could give it.* 

Now, is not all this an admirable illustration of my 
great principle, that the tranquil enjoyment of life 
comes to be drawn a good deal from external sources, 
and a great deal more from very little things'? An 
ex-Prime Minister thought that the sight of lobsters' 
backs shining in the gas-light was quite enough to 
make a reasonable man content for one evening. But 
give me, say I, not the fleeting joy of the lobsters' 
backs, any more than Sydney Smith's sugar-plums, 
lazy satisfactions partaken in passiveness. Give me 
the perennial, calm, active, stimulating, moral and 
intellectual content which comes of living amid hun- 
dreds of objects and events which are all scrupulously 
Right ; and thus, let us all (as Wordsworth would 
no doubt have written had I pressed the matter upon 

him) 

feed this mind of ours, 
In a wise Tidiness ! 

I have long wished to write an essay on Tidiness ; 
for it appears to me that the absence of this simple 
and humble quality is tlie cause of a considerable part 
of all the evil and suffering, physical and moral, which 
exist among ordinary folk in this world. Most of us, 

* ' Friends in Council Abroad.' Frascr's Magazine, vol. liii. p. 2. 
(January, 1S56.) 



Tidiness. 



247 



my readers, are little people ; and so it is not surpris- 
ing that our earthly comfort should be at the mercy 
of little things. But even if we were, as some of us 
probably think ourselves, very great and eminent 
people, not the less would our content be liable to be 
disturbed by very small matters. A few gritty grains 
of sand finding their way amid the polished shafts and 
axles of some great piece of machinery, will suffice to 
send a jar through it all ; and a single drop of a cor- 
roding acid falling ceaselessly upon a bright surface 
will speedily ruin its brightness. And in the life of 
many men and women, the presence of that physical 
and mental confusion and discomfort which result 
from the absence of tidiness, is just that dropping 
acid, those gritty particles. I do not know why it is 
that, by the constitution of this universe, evil has so 
much more power than good to produce its effect and 
to propagate its nature. One drop of foul will pollute 
a whole cup of fair water ; but one drop of fair water 
has no power to appreciably improve a cup of foul. 
Sharp pain, present in a tooth or a toe, will make the 
whole man miserable, though all the rest of his body 
be easy ; but if all the rest of the body be suffering, 
an easy toe or tooth will cause no perceptible allevia- 
tion. And so a man with an easy income, with a 
pretty house in a pleasant neighbourhood, with a 
good-tempered wife and healthy children, may quite 



248 



Tidii 



well have some little drop of bitterness day by day in- 
fused into his cup, which will take away the relish of it 
all. And this bitter drop, I believe, in the lot of many 
men, is the constant existence of a domestic muddle. 

And yet, practically important as I believe the sub- 
ject to be, still one rather shrinks from the formal dis- 
cussion of it. It is not a dignified matter to write 
about. The name is naturally suggestive of a sour old 
maid, a precise old bachelor, a vinegar-faced school- 
mistress, or at best a plump and bustling housemaid. 
To some minds the name is redolent of worry, fault- 
finding, and bother. Every one can see that it is a 
fine thing to discuss the laws and order of great 
things, — such as comets, planets, empires, and great 
cities ; things, in short, with which we have very little 
to do. And why should law and order appear con- 
temptible just where they touch ourselves ? Is it as 
the ocean, clear and clean in its distant depths, grows 
foul and turbid just where it touches the shore? 
That which we call law and order when affecting 
things far away, becomes tidiness when it reaches us. 
Yet it is not a dignified topic for an essay. 

This is a beautiful morning. It is the morning of 
one of the last days of September, but the trees, with 
the exception of some of the sycamores and limes, 
are as green and thick-leaved as ever. The dew lies 
thick upon the grass, and the bright morning sun 




turns it to glancing gems. The threads of gossamer 
among the evergreen leaves look like necklaces for 
Titania. The crisp air, just touched with frostiness, is 
exhilarating. The dahlias and hollyhocks are bright, 
but the frost will soon make an end of the former. 
The swept harvest-fields look trim, and the outline of 
the distant hills shews sharp against the blue sky. 
Taking advantage of the moisture on the grass, 
the gardener is busy mowing it. Curious, that 
though it sets people's teeth on edge to listen to the 
sharpening of edge-tools in general, yet there is some- 
thing that is extremely pleasing in the whetting of a 
scythe. It had better be a little way off. But it is 



250 Tidiness. 

suggestive of fresh, pleasant things ; of dewy grass 
and bracing morning air ; of clumps of trees standing 
still in the early mistiness ; of ' milkmaids singing 
blithe.' Let us thank Milton for the last association : 
we did not get it from daily life. I never heard a 
milkmaid singing ; in this part of the country I don 't 
think they do sing ; and I believe cows are invariably 
milked within doors. But now, how pleasant the trim 
look of that newly-mown lawn, so carefully swept and 
rolled ; there is not a dandelion in it all, — no weed 
whatsoever. There are indeed abundant daisies, for 
though I am assured that daisies in a lawn are weeds, 
I never shall recognise them as such. To me they 
shall always be flowers, and welcome everywhere. 
Look, too, at the well-defined outhne of the grass 
against the gravel. I feel the joy of tidiness, and 
I gladly WTite in its praise. 

Looking at this grass and gravel, I think of Mr. 
Tennyson. I remember a little poem of his which 
contains some description of his home. There, he 
tells us, the sunset falls 

All round a careless-order'd garden. 
Close by the ridge of a noble down. 

I lament a defect in that illustrious man. Great is 
my reverence for the author of Maud; great for the 
author of Locksley Hall and the May Queen ; greatest 
of all for the author of In Memoriani : but is it pos- 



Tidiness. 251 

sible that the Laureate should be able to elaborate 
his verses to that last and most exquisite perfection, 
while thinking of weedy walks outside his windows, of 
unpruned shrubs, and fruit-trees fallen from the walls % 
Must the thought be admitted to the mind, that Mr, 
Tennyson is not tidy ? I know not. I never saw his 
garden. Rather let me beheve that these lines only 
shew how tidy he is. Perhaps his garden would 
appear in perfect order to the visitor; perhaps it 
seems 'careless-ordered' only to his own sharp eye. 
Perhaps he discerns a weed here and there ; a blank 
of an inch length in a box-wood edging. Perhaps, 
like lesser men, he cannot get his servants to be as tidy 
as himself No doubt such is the state of matters. 

There are, indeed, many degrees in the scale of 
tidiness. It is a disposition that grows upon one, and 
sometimes becomes almost a bondage. Some great 
musical composer said, shordy before he died, that 
he was only then beginning to get an insight into the 
capabilities of his art ; and I dare say a similar idea 
has occasionally occurred to most persons endowed 
with a very keen sense of order. In matters external, 
tidiness may go to the length of what we read of 
Broek, that Dutch paradise of scrubbing-brushes and 
new paint ; in matters metaphysical, it may go the 
length of what John Foster tells us of himself, when 
his fastidious sense of the exact sequence of every 



252 Tidiness. 

shade of thought compelled him to make some thou- 
sands of corrections and improvements in revising a 
dozen printed pages of his own composition. Tidi- 
ness is in some measure a matter of natural tempera- 
ment ; there are human beings who never could by 
possibility sit down contentedly, as some can, in a 
chamber where everything is topsy-turvy, and who 
never could by possibility have their affairs, their 
accounts, their books and papers, in that inextricable 
confusion in which some people are quite satisfied to 
have theirs. There may, indeed, be such a thing as 
that a man shall be keenly alive to the presence or 
absence of order in his belongings, but at the same 
time so nerveless and washy that he cannot bestir 
himself and set things to rights ; but as a general rule, 
the man who enjoys order and exactness will take care 
to have them about him. There are people who 
never go into a room but they see at a glance if any 
of its appointments are awry ; and the impression is 
precisely that which a discordant note leaves on a 
musical ear. A friend of mine, not an ecclesiastical 
architect, never enters any church without devising 
various alterations in it. The same person^ when he 
enters his library in the morning, cannot be easy until 
he has surveyed it minutely, and seen that everything 
is right to a hair's-breadth. Taught by long ex- 
perience, the servants have done their part, and all 



Tidiness. 253 

appears perfect already to the casual observer. Not 
so to his eye. The hearth-rug needs a touch of the 
foot : the libraiy-table becomes a marvel of colloca- 
tion. Inkstands, pen-trays, letter-weighers, pamphlets, 
books, are marshalled more accurately than Frederick 
the Great's grenadiers. A chair out of its place, a 
corner of a crumb-cloth turned up, and my friend 
could no more get on with his task of composition 
than he could fly. I can hardly understand how Dr. 
Johnson was able to write the Rambler and to balance 
the periods of his sonorous prose while his books 
were lying upstairs dog's-eared, battered, covered 
with dust, strewed in heaps on the floor. But I do 
not wonder that Sydney Smith could go through so 
much and so varied work, and do it all cheerfully, 
when I read how he thought it no unworthy employ- 
ment of the intellect which slashed respectable hum- 
bug in the Edinburgh Review, to arrange that wonder- 
ful store-room in his rectory at Foston, where every 
article of domestic consumption was allotted its place 
by the genial, clear-headed, active-minded man : where 
was the lemon-bag, where was the soap of diff"erent 
prices (the cheapest placed in the wrappings marked 
with the dearest price) : where were salt, pickles, 
hams, butter, cheese, onions, and medicines of every 
degree, from the 'gentle jog' of ordinary life to the 
fearfully-named preparations reserved for extremity. 



254 Tidiness. 

Of course it was only because the kind reviewer's wife 
was a confirmed invalid that it became a man's duty 
to intenneddle with such womanly household cares : 
let masculine tidiness find its sphere out of doors, and 
feminine within. It is curious how some men, of 
whom we should not have expected it, had a strong 
tendency to a certain orderliness. Byron, for example, 
led a very irregular life, morally speaking ; yet there 
was a curious tidiness about it too. He liked to 
spend certain hours of the forenoon daily in writing ; 
then, always at the same hour, his horses came to the 
door ; he rode along the same road to the same spot ; 
there he daily fired his pistols, turned, and rode home 
again. He liked to fall into a kind of mill-horse round : 
there was an imperfectly-developed tidiness about the 
man. And even Johnson himself, though he used to 
kick his books savagely about, and had his study floor 
littered with fragments of manuscript, shewed hopeful 
symptoms of what he might have been made, when 
he daily walked up Bolt Court, carefully placing his 
feet upon the self-same stones, in the self-same 
order. 

Great men, to be sure, may do what they please, 
and if they choose to dress like beggars and to have 
their houses as frowsy as themselves, why, we must 
excuse it for the sake of all that we owe them. But 
Wesley was philosophically right when he insisted on 



Tidiness. 



255 



the necessity, for ordinary men, of neatness and tidi- 
ness in dress ; and we cannot help making a moral 
estimate of people from what we see of their confor- 
mity to the great law of rightness in little things. I 
cannot tolerate a harum-scarum fellow who never 
knows where to find anything he wants, whose boots 
and handkerchiefs and gloves are everywhere but 
where they are needed. And who would marry a 
slatternly girl, whose dress is frayed at the edges and 
whose fingers are through her gloves ? The Latin 
poet wrote. Nulla fronti fides ; but I have consider- 
able faith in a front-door. * If, when I go to the house 
of a man of moderate means, I find the steps scrupu- 
lously clean, and the brass about the door shining 
like gold ; and if, when the door is opened by a per- 
fectly neat servant, (I don't suppose a footman,) I find 
the hall trim as it should be, the oil-cloth shiny with- 
out being slippery, the stair-carpet laid straight as 
an arrow, the brass rods which hold it gleaming, I 
cannot but think that things are going well in that 
house ; that it is the home of cheerfulness, hopeful- 
ness, and reasonable prosperity ; that the people in it 
speak truth and hate whiggery. Especially I respect 
the mistress of that house ; and conclude that she is 
doing her duty in that station in life to which it has 
pleased God to call her. 

But if tidiness be thus important everywhere, what 



256 Tidiness. 

must it be in the dwellings of the poor % In these, so 
far as my experience has gone, tidiness and morality 
are always in direct proportion. You can see at once 
when you enter a poor man's cottage (always with 
your hat off, my friend) how his circumstances are, 
and generally how his character is. If the world is 
going against him ; if hard work and constant pinch- 
ing will hardly get food and clothing for the children, 
you see the fact in the untidy house : the poor mistress 
of it has no heart for that constant effort which is 
needful in the cottage to keep things right ; she has 
no heart for the constant stitching which is needful 
to keep the poor little children's clothes on their backs. 
Many a time it has made my heart sore to see, in the 
relaxation of wonted tidiness, the first indication that 
things are going amiss, that hope is dying, that the 
poor struggling pair are feeling that their heads are 
getting under water at last. All, there is often a sad 
significance in the hearth no longer so cleanly swept, 
in the handle wanting from the chest of drawers, in 
little Jamie's torn jacket, which a few stitches would 
mend, but which I remember torn for these ten days 
past ! And remember, my reader, that to keep a 
poor man's cottage tidy, his wife must always have 
spirit and heart to work. \{ you choose, when you 
feel unstnmg by some depression, to sit all day by the 
fire, the house will be kept tidy by the servants without 



Tidiness. 257 

your interference. And indeed the inmates of a house 
of the better sort are putting things out of order from 
morning till night, and would leave the house in a sad 
mess if the servants were not constantly following in 
their wake and setting things to rights again. But if 
the labourer's wife, anxious and weak and sick at heart 
as she may rise from her poor bed, do not yet wash 
and dress the little children, they will not be either 
washed or dressed at all ; if she do not kindle her 
fire, there will be no fire at all ; if she do not prepare 
her husband's breakfast, he must go out to his hard 
work without any ; if she do not make the beds and 
dust the chairs and tables and wash the linen, and do a 
host of other things, they will not be done at all. And 
then in the forenoon Mrs. Bouncer, the retired manu- 
facturer's wife, (Mr. Bouncer has just bought the estate,) 
enters the cottage with an air of extreme condescen- 
sion and patronage, and if everything about the cottage 
be not in tidy order, Mrs. Bouncer rebukes the poor 
down-hearted creature for laziness and neglect. I 
should like to choke Mrs. Bouncer for her heartless 
insolence. I think some of the hatefuUest phases of 
human nature are exhibited in the visits paid by newly 
rich folk to the dwellings of the poor. You, Mrs. 
Bouncer, and people like you, have no more right to 
enter a poor man's house and insult his wife than that 
poor man has to enter your drawing-room and give 
.s 



258 Tidiness. 

you a piece of his mind upon matters in general and 
yourself in particular. We hear much now-a-days 
about the distinctive characteristics of ladies and 
gentlemen, as contrasted with those of people who 
are well-dressed and live in fine houses, but whom no 
house and no dress will ever make gentlemen and 
ladies. It seems to me that the very first and finest 
characteristic of all who are justly entitled to these 
names of honour, is a most delicate, scrupulous, chi- 
valrous consideration for the feelings of the poor. 
Without that^ the cottage-visitor will do no good to the 
cottager. If you, my lady friend, who are accustomed 
to visit the dwellings of the poor in your neighbour- 
hood, convey by your entire demeanour the impression 
that you are, socially and intellectually, coming a great 
way down stairs in order to make yourself agreeable 
and intelligible to the people you find there, you had 
better have stayed at home. You will irritate, you 
will rasp, you will embitter, you will excite a disposition 
to let fly at your head. You may sometimes gratify 
your vanity and folly by meeting with a servile and 
crawling adulation, but it is a hypocritical adulation 
that grovels in your presence and shakes the fist at 
you after the door has closed on your retreating steps. 
Don't fancy I am exaggerating : I describe nothing 
which I have not myself seen and known. 

I like to think of the effect which tidiness has in 



Tidiness. 259 

equalising the real content of the rich and poor. If 
even you, my reader, find it pleasant to go into the 
humblest little dwelling where perfect neatness reigns, 
think what j^leasure the inmates (perhaps the solitary 
inmate) of that dwelling must have in daily maintain- 
ing that speckless tidiness, and living in the midst of 
it. There is to me a perfect charm about a sanded 
floor, and about deal furniture scrubbed into the per- 
fection of cleanliness. How nice the table and the 
chairs look ; hoAv inviting that solitary big arm-chair 
by the little fire ! The fireplace indeed consists of 
two blocks of stone washed over with pipeclay, and 
connected by half a dozen bars of iron ; but no re- 
gister grate of polished steel ever pleased me better. 
God has made us so that there is a racy enjoyment, a 
delightful smack, about extreme simplicity co-existing 
with extreme tidiness. I don't mean to say that I 
should prefer that sanded floor and those chairs of 
deal to a Turkey carpet and carved oak or walnut ; 
but I assert that there is a certain indefinable relish 
about the simpler furniture which the grander wants. 
In a handsome apartment you don't think of looking 
at the upholstery in detail ; you remark whether the 
general effect be good or bad ; but in the little cottage 
you look with separate enjoyment on each separate 
simple contrivance. Do you think that a rich man, 
sitting in his sumptuous hbrary, all oak and morocco, 



26o Tidiness. 

glittering backs of splendid volumes, lounges and 
sofas of every degree, which he merely paid for, has 
half the enjoyment that Robinson Crusoe had when 
he looked round his cave with its rude shelves and 
bulkheads, its clumsy arm-chair and its rough pottery, 
all contrived and made by his own hands 1 Now the 
poor cottager has a good deal of the Robinson Crusoe 
enjoyment; something of the pleasure which Sandford 
and Merton felt when they had built and thatched 
their house, and then sat within it, gravely proud and 
happy, whilst the pelting shower came down but could 
not reach them. When a man gets the length of con- 
sidering the architectural character of his house, the 
imposing effect which the great entrance-hall will have 
upon visitors, the vista of drawing-room retiring within 
drawing-room, he loses the relish which accompanies 
the original idea of a house as a something which is 
to keep us snug and warm from wind and rain and 
cold. So if you gain something by having a grand 
house, you lose something too, and something which 
is the more constantly and sensibly felt — you lose the 
joy of simple tidiness ; and your life grows so artificial, 
that many days you never think of your dwelling at 
all, nor remember what it looks like. 

I have not space to say anything of the importance 
of tidiness in the poor man's dwelling in a sanitary 
point of view. Untidiness thax is the direct cause of 



Tidiness. 26 1 

disease and death. And it is the thing, too, which 
drives the husband and father to the alehouse. All 
this has been so often said, that it is needless to re- 
peat it ; but there is another thing which is not so 
generally understood, and which deserves to be men- 
tioned. Let me then say to all landed proprietors, it 
depends very much upon you whether the poor man's 
home shall be tidy or not. Give a poor man a decent 
cottage, and he has some heart to keep tidiness about 
the door, and his wife has some heart to maintain 
tidiness within. Many of the dwellings which the 
rich provide for the poor are such that the poor in- 
mates must just sit do^vn in despair, feeling that it is 
vain to try to be tidy, either without doors or within. 
If the cottage floor is of clay, which becomes a damp 
puddle in rainy weather ; if the roof be of very old 
thatch, full of insects, and open to the apartment 
below ; if you go doivn one or two steps below the 
level of the surrounding earth when you enter the 
house ; if there be no proper chimney, but merely a 
hole in the roof, to which the smoke seems not to find 
its way till it has visited every other nook ; if swarms 
of parasitic vermin have established themselves be- 
yond expulsion through fifty years of neglect and 
filth ; if a dung-heap be by ancient usage established 
under the window ; * then how can a poor overwrought 

* The writer describes nothing which he has not seen a hundred times. He 



262 Tidiness. 

man or woman {and energy and activity die out in 
the atmosphere of constant anxiety and care) find 
spirit to try to tidy a place Uke that? They do not 
know where to begin the hopeless task. A little en- 
couragement will do wonders to develop a spirit of 
tidiness. The love of order and neatness, and the 
capacity of enjoying order and neatness, are latent in 
all human hearts. A man who has lived for a dozen 
years in a filthy hovel, Avithout once making a reso- 
lute endeavour to amend it, will, when you put him 
down in a neat pretty cottage, astonish you by the 
spirit of tidiness he will exhibit ; and his wife will 
astonish you as much. They feel that now there is 
some use in trying. There was none before. The 
good that is in most of us needs to be encouraged and 
fostered. In few human beings is tidiness, or any 
other virtue, so energetic that it will force its way in 
spite of extreme opposition. Anything good usually 
sets out with timid, weakly beginnings ; and it may 
easily be crushed then. And the love of tidiness is 
crushed in many a poor man and woman by the kind 
of dwelling in which they are placed by their land- 
lords. Let us thank God that better times are be- 
ginning ; but times are still bad enough. I don't 

has seen a cottage, the approach to which was a narrow passage, about two 
feet in breadth, cut through a large flung-heap, which rose more than a yard 
on either side of the narrow passage, and which was piled up to a fathom's 
height against the cottage wall. This was not in Ireland. 



Tidiness. 263 

envy the man, commoner or peer, whom I see in his 
carriage-and-four, when I think how a score or two 
families of his fellow-creatures upon his property are 
living in places where he would not put his horses or 
his dogs. I am conservatively enough inclined ; but 
I sometimes think I could join in a Chartist rising. 

Experience has shewn that healthy, cheerful, airy 
cottages for the poor, in which something like decency 
is possible, entail no pecuniary loss upon the philan- 
thropic proprietor who builds them. But even if 
they did, it is his bounden duty to provide such 
dwellings. If he do not, he is disloyal to his country, 
an enemy to his race, a traitor to the God who 
intrusted him with so much. And surely, in the 
judgment of all whose opinion is worth a rush, it is a 
finer thing to have the cottages on a man's estate 
places fit for human habitation, — with the climbing 
roses covering them, the little gravel-walk to the 
door, the little potato-plot cultivated at after-hours, with 
windows that can open and doors that can shut ; with 
little children not pallid and lean, but plump and rosy 
(and fresh air has as much to do with that as abun- 
dant food has), — surely, I say, it is better a thousand 
times to have one's estate dotted with scenes such 
as that, than to have a dozen more paintings on 
one's walls, or a score of additional horses in one's 
stables. 



And now, having said so much in praise of tidiness, 
let me conclude by remarking that it is possible to 
carry even this virtue to excess. It is foolish to keep 
houses merely to be cleaned, as some Dutch house- 
wives are said to do. Nor is it fit to clip the graceful 
fomis of Nature into unnatural trimness and formality, 
as Dutch gardeners do. Among ourselves, however, 
I am not aware that there exists any tendency to 
either error ; so it is needless to argue against either. 
The perfection of Dutch tidiness is to be found, I 
have said, at Broek, a few miles from Amsterdam. 
Here is some account of it from Washington Irving's 
ever-pleasing pen : — 

What renders Broek so perfect an Elysium in the eyes 
of all true Hollanders, is the matchless height to which 
the spirit of cleanliness is carried there. It amounts 
almost to a religion among the inhabitants, who pass the 
greater part of their time rubbing and scrubbing, and 
painting and varnishing : each housewife vies with her 
neighbour in devotion to the scrubbing-brush, as zealous 
Catholics do in their devotion to the Cross. 

I alighted outside the village, for no horse or vehicle is 
permitted to enter its precincts, lest it should cause de- 
filement of the welbscoured pavements. Shaking the 
dust off my feet, then, I prepared to enter, with due reve- 
rence and circumspection, this sanctum sanctorum of 
Dutch cleanliness. I entered by a narrow street, paved 
with yellow bricks, laid edgewise, and so clean that one 
might eat from them. Indeed, they were actually worn 



deep, not by the tread of feet, but by the friction of the 
scrubbing-brush. 

The houses were built of wood, and all appeared to 
have been freshly painted, of green, yellow, and other 
bright colours. They were separated from each other by 
gardens and orchards, and stood at some little distance 
from the street, with wide areas or courtyards, paved in 
mosaic with variegated stones, polished by frequent rub- 
bing. The areas were divided from the streets by 
curiously-wrought railings or balustrades of iron, sur- 
mounted with brass and copper balls, scoured into dazzling 
effulgence. The very trunks of the trees in front of the 
houses were by the same process made to look as if they 
had been varnished. The porches, doors, and window- 
frames of the houses were of exotic woods, curiously carved, 
and polished like costly furniture. The front doors are 
never opened, except on christenings, marriages, and 
funerals ; on all ordinary occasions, visitors enter by the 
back-doors. In former times, persons when admitted 
had to put on slippers, but this oriental ceremony is no 
longer insisted on. 

We are assured by the same authority, that such is 
the love of tidiness which prevails at Broek, that the 
good people there can imagine no greater felicity than 
to be ever surrounded by the very perfection of it. 
And it seems that the prediger, or preacher of the 
place, accommodates his doctrine to the views of his 
hearers ; and in his weekly discourses, when he would 
describe that Happy Place where, as I trust, my 
readers and I will one day meet the quiet burghers 



266 



Tidiness. 



of Broek, he strongly insists that it is the very tidiest 
place in the universe : a place where all things (I 
trust he says within as well as around) are spotlessly 
pure and clean ; and where all disorder, confusion, 
and dirt, are done with for ever ! 







HAY-MAKING. 




KIRK AND MANSE. 



CHAPTER VII. 



HOW I MUSED IN THE RAILWAY TRAIN : 

BEING THOUGHTS ON RISING BY CANDLE-LIGHT ; ON 
NERVOUS FEARS ; AND ON VAPOURING. 

NOT entirely awake, I am standing on the plat- 
form of a large railway terminus in a certain 
great city, at 7.20 a.m. on a foggy morning early in 



268 How I Mused in the 

January. I am about to set out on a journey of a 
hundred miles by the 7.30 train, which is a slow one, 
stopping at all the stations. I am alone ; for more 
than human would that friendship be which would 
bring out mortal man to see one off at such an hour 
in winter. It is a dreamy sort of scene ; I can hardly 
feel that it substantially exists. Who has not some- 
times, on a still autumn afternoon, suddenly stopped 
on a path winding through sere, motionless woods, 
and felt within himself. Now, I can hardly believe 
in all this. You talk of the difficulty of realising 
the unseen and spiritual ; is it not sometimes, in 
certain mental moods, and in certain aspects of 
external nature, quite as difficult to feel the sub- 
stantial existence of things which we can see and 
touch? Extreme stillness and loneliness, perhaps, 
are the usual conditions of this peculiar feeling. 
Sometimes most men have thought to themselves 
that it would be well for them if they could but have 
the evidence of sense to assure them of certain great 
realities which while we live in this world we never 
can touch or see ; but I think that many readers will 
agree with me when I say, that very often the evidence 
of sense comes no nearer to producing the solid con- 
viction of reality than does that widely different evi- 
dence on which we believe the existence of all that 
is not material. You have climbed, alone, on an 



Railway Train. 269 

autumn day, to the top of a great hill ; a river runs 
at its base unheard ; a champaign country spreads 
beyond the river ; cornfields swept and bare ; hedge- 
rows dusky green against the yellow ground \ a little 
farmhouse here and there, over which the smoke 
stagnates in the breezeless air. It is heather that 
you are standing on. And as you stand there alone, 
and look away over that scene, you have felt as 
though sense, and the convictions of sense, were par- 
tially paralysed : you have been aware that you could 
not 7^^/ that the landscape before you was solid reality. 
I am not talking to blockheads, who never thought 
or felt anything particularly ; of course they could 
not understand my meaning. But as for you, thought- 
ful reader, have you not sometimes, in such a scene, 
thought to yourself, not without a certain startled 
pleasure, — Now, I realise it no more substantially that 
there spreads a landscape beyond that river, than that 
there spreads a country beyond the grave ! 

There are many curious moods of mind, of which 
you will find no mention in books of metaphysics. 
The writers of works of mental philosophy keep by 
the bread and butter of the world of mind. And 
every one who knows by personal experience how 
great a part of the actual phases of thought and 
feeling lies beyond the reach of logical explanation, 
and can hardly be fixed and represented by any 



270 How I Mused in the 

words, will rejoice when he meets with any account of 
intellectual moods which he himself has often known, 
but which are not to be classified or explained. And 
people are shy about talking of such things. I felt 
indebted to a friend, a man of high talent and cultiva- 
tion, whom I met on the street of a large city on a 
snowy winter day. The streets were covered with un- 
melted snow ; so were the housetops ; how black and 
dirty the walls looked, contrasting with the snow. 
Great flakes were falling thickly, and making a curtain 
which at a few yards' distance shut out all objects 
more effectually than the thickest fog. 'It is a day,' 
said my friend, ' I don't believe in ; ' and then he went 
away. And I know he would not believe in the day, 
and he would not feel that he was in a world of reality, 
till he had escaped from the eerie scene out of doors, 
and sat down by his library fire. But has not the 
mood found a more beautiful description in Coleridge's 
tragedy of Remorse ? Opium, no doubt, may have in- 
creased such phases of mind in his case ; but they are 
well known by numbers who never tasted opium : — 

On a rude rock, 
A rock, methought, fast by a grove of firs. 
Whose thready leaves to the low-breathing gale. 
Made a soft sound most like thedistant ocean, 
I staid, as though the hour of death were pass'd. 
And I were sitting in the world of spirits — 
For all things seem'd unreal. 



Raihvay Train. 271 



And there can be no doubt that the long vaulted 
vistas through a pine wood, the motionless trunks, dark 
and ghostly, and the surgy swell of the wind through 
the spines, are conditions very likely to bring on, if you 
are alone, this particular mental state. 

But to return to the raihvay station which suggested 
all this ; it is a dreamy scene, and I look at it with 
sleepy eyes. There are not many people going by 
the train, though it is a long one. Daylight is an 
hour or more distant yet; and the directors, either 
with the design of producing picturesque lights and 
shadows in their shed, or with the design of econo- 
mising gas, have resorted to the expedient of lighting 
only every second lamp. There are no lamps, too, 
in the carriages ; and the blank abysses seen through 
the open doors remind one of the cells in some 
feudal dungeon. A little child would assuredly howl 
if it were brought to this place this morning. Away 
in the gloom, at the end of the train, the sombre 
engine that is to take us is hissing furiously, and 
throwing a lurid glare upon the ground underneath 
it. Nobody's wits have fully arrived. The clerk who 
gave me my ticket was yawning tremendously ; the 
porters on the platform are yawning : the guard, who 
is standing two yards off, looking very neat and 
trimly dressed through the gloom, is yawning ; the 
stoker who was shovelling coke into the engine fire 



272 How I Mused in the 

was yawning awfully as he did so. We are away 
through the fog, through the mist, over the black 
country, which is slowly turning gray in the morning 
twilight. I have with me various newspapers ; but 
for an hour or more it will be impossible to see to 
read them. Two fellow-travellers, whose forms I dimly 
trace, I hear expressing indignation that the railway 
company give no lamps in the carriages. I lean back 
and try to think. 

It is most depressing and miserable work, getting 
up by candle-light. It is impossible to shave com- 
fortably ; it is impossible to have a satisfactory bath ; 
it is impossible to find anything you want. Sleep, 
says Sancho Panza, covers a man all over like a 
mantle of comfort ; but rising before daylight en- 
velops the entire being in petty misery. An inde- 
scribable vacuity makes itself felt in the epigastric 
regions, and a leaden heaviness weighs upon heart and 
spirits. It must be a considerable item in the hard 
lot of domestic servants, to have to get up through 
all the winter months in the cold dark house : let us 
be thankful to them through whose humble labours 
and self-denial we find the cheerful fire blazing in 
the tidy breakfast-parlour when we find our way 
downstairs. That same apartment looked cheerless 
enough when the housemaid entered it two hours ago. 
It is sad when you are lying in bed of a morning, 



Railway Train. 273 



lazily conscious of that circling amplitude of comfort, 
to hear the chilly cry of the poor sweep outside ; or the 
tread of the factory hands shivering by in their thin 
garments towards the great cotton mill, glaring spec- 
tral out of its many windows, but at least with a cosy 
suggestion of warmth and light. Think of the baker, 
too, who rose in the dark of midnight that those hot 
rolls might appear on your breakfast table ; and of 
the printer, intelligent, active, accurate to a degree 
that you careless folk who put no points in your 
letters have little idea of, whose labours have given 
you that damp sheet which in a Httle will feel so 
crisp and firm after it has been duly dried, and which 
will tell you all that is going on over all the world, 
down to the opera which closed at twelve, and the 
parliamentary debate which was not over till half-past 
four. It is good occasionally to rise at five on a 
December morning, that you may feel how much you 
are indebted to some who do so for your sake all the 
winter through. No doubt they get accustomed to 
it : but so may you by doing it always. A great 
many people living easy lives, have no idea of the 
discomfort of rising by candle-light. Probably they 
hardly ever did it : when they did it, they had a 
blazing fire and abundant light to dress by ; and even 
with these advantages, which essentially change the 
nature of the enterprise, they have not done it for 



2/4 How I Mused in thd 

very long. What an aggregate of misery is the result 
of that inveterate usage in the University of Glasgow, 
that the early lectures begin at 7.30 a.m. from No- 
vember till May ! How utterly miserable the dark, 
dirty streets look, as the unhappy student splashes 
through mud and smoke to the black archway that 
admits to those groves of Academe ! And what a 
blear-eyed, unwashed, unshaven, blinking, ill-natured, 
wretched set it is that fills the benches of the lecture- 
room ! The design of the authorities in maintaining 
that early hour has been much misunderstood. Phi- 
losophers have taught that the professors, in bringing 
out their unhappy students at that period, had it in 
view to turn to use an hour of the day which other- 
wise would have been wasted in bed, and thus set free 
an hour at a better season of the day. Another 
school of metaphysicians, among whom may be reck- 
oned the eminent authors. Brown, Jones, and Robin- 
son, have maintained with considerable force of argu- 
ment that the authorities of the University, eager to 
advance those under their charge in health, wealth, 
and wisdom, have resorted to an observance which has 
for many ages been regarded as conducive to that 
end. Others, again, the most eminent among whom 
is Smith, have taken up the ground tliat the pro- 
fessors have fixed on the early hour for no reason in 
particular; but that, as the classes must meet at 



Railway Traiji. 2715 

some hour of each day, ^ley might just as well meet 
at that hour as at any other. All these theories are 
erroneous. There is more in the system than meets 
the eye. It originated in Roman Catholic days ; and 
something of the philosophy of the stoic and of the 
faith of the anchorite is involved in it. Grim lessons 
of endurance ; dark hints of penance ; extensive dis- 
gust at matters in general, and a disposition to punch 
the head of humanity ; are mystically connected with 
the lectures at 7.30 a.m. in winter. It is quite dif- 
ferent in summer, when everything is bright and in- 
viting ; if you are up and forth by five or six o'clock 
any morning then, you feel ashamed as you look at 
the drawn blinds and the closed shutters of the house 
m the broad daylight. There is something curious 
in the contrast between the stillness and shut-up look 
of a country-house in the early summer morning, and 
the blaze of light, the dew sparkling life-like on the 
grass, the birds singing, and all nature plainly awake, 
though man is asleep. You feel that at 7.30 in June, 
Nature intends you to be astir; but believe it, ye 
learned doctors of Glasgow College, at 7.30 in De- 
cember her intention is quite the reverse. And if 
you fly in Nature's face, and persist in getting up at 
unseasonable hours, she will take it out of you by 
making you horribly uncomfortable. 

There is, indeed, one fashion in which rising by 



2/6 How I Mused in the 

candle-light, under the most uncomfortable circum- 
stances, may turn to a source of positive enjoyment. 
And the more dreary and wretched you feel, as you 
wearily drag yourself out of bed into the searching 
cold, the greater will that peculiar enjoyment be'. 
Have you not, my reader, learned by your own ex- 
perience that the machinery of the human mind and 
heart may be worked backwards, just as a steam- 
engine is reversed, so that a result may be produced 
which is exactly the opposite of the normal one 1 
The fundamental principle on which the working of 
the human constitution, as regards pleasure and pain, 
goes, may be stated in the following formula, which 
will not appear a truism except to those who have not 
brains to understand it — 

The more jolly you are, the jollier you are. 

But by reversing the poles, or by working the 
machine backwards, many human beings, such as 
Indian fakirs, medieval monks and hermits, Simeon 
Stylites, very early risers, very hard students, Childe 
Harold, men who fall in love and then go off to 
Australia without telling the young woman, and the 
like, bring themselves to this : — that their fundamental 
principle, as regards pleasure and pain, takes the 
following form — 

The more miserable you are, the jollier you 

ARE. 



Railway Train. 277 

Don't you know that all that is true % A man may 
bring himself to this point, that it shall be to him a 
positive satisfaction to think how much he is denying 
himself, and how much he is taking out of himself. 
And all this satisfaction may be felt quite irrespective 
of any worthy end to be attained by all this pain, toil, 
endurance, self-denial. I believe indeed that the 
taste for suffering as a source of enjoyment is an ac- 
quired taste ; it takes some time to bring any human 
being to it. It is not natural, in the obvious meaning 
of the word ; but assuredly it is natural in the sense 
that it founds on something which is of the essence 
of human nature. You must penetrate through the 
upper stratum of the heart, so to speak — that stratum 
which finds enjoyment in enjoyment — then you reach 
to a deeper sensoriiun, one whose sensibility is as keen, 
one whose sensibility is longer in getting dulled — that 
sensor iiim which finds enjoyment in endurance. Nor 
have many years to pass over us before we come to feel 
that this peculiar sensibility has been in some measure 
developed. If you, my friend, are now a man, it is 
probable (alas ! not certain) that you were once a boy. 
Perhaps you were a clever boy ; perhaps you were at 
the head of your class ; perhaps you were a hard- 
working boy. And now tell me, when on a fine sum- 
mer evening you heard the shouts and merriment of 
your companions in the playground, while you were 



2/8 How I Mnsed in the 

toiling away with your lexicon and your Livy, or turn- 
ing a passage from Shakspeare into Greek iambics 
(a hardly-acquired accomplishment, which has proved 
so useful in after-life), did you not feel a certain 
satisfaction — it was rather a sad one, but still a satis- 
faction — as you thought how pleasant it would be to 
be out in the beautiful sunshine, and yet felt resolved 
that out you would not go ! Well for you if your 
father and mother set themselves stoutly against this 
dangerous feeling ; well for you if you never overheard 
them relating with pride to their acquaintances what 
a laborious, self denying, wonderful boy you were ! 
For the sad satisfaction which has been described is 
the self-same feeling which makes the poor Hindoo 
swing himself on a large hook stuck through his skin, 
and the fakir pleased when he finds that his arm, 
stretched out for twenty years, cannot now be drawn 
back. It is precisely the feeling which led the saints of 
the Middle Ages to starve themselves till their palate 
grew insensible to the taste of food, or to flagellate 
themselves as badly as Legree did Uncle Tom, or to 
refrain wholly from the use of soap and water for forty 
years. It is a most dangerous thing to indulge in, 
this enjoyment arising from the principle of the greatest 
jollity from the greatest suffering ; for although we 
ought to feel thankful that God has so ordered things, 
that in a world where little that is good can be done 



Railway Train. 279 

except by painful exertion and resolute self-denial, a 
certain satisfaction is linked even with that exertion 
and self-denial in themselves, apart from the good 
results to which they lead ; it seems to me that we 
have no right to add needless bitterness to life that 
our morbid spirit may draw from it a morbid enjoy- 
ment. No doubt self-denial, and struggle against our 
nature for the right, is a noble thing : but I think that 
in the present day there is a tendency unduly to exalt 
both work and self-denial, as though these things were 
excellent in themselves apart from any excellent ends 
which follow from them. Work, merely as work, is 
not a good thing : it is a good thing because of the 
excellent things that come with it and of it. And so 
with self-denial, whether it appear in swinging on a 
hook or in rising at five on a winter morning. It is 
a noble thing if it is to do some good ; but very many 
people appear to think it a noble thing in itself, 
though it do no good whatever. The man deserves 
canonisation who swings on a hook to save his 
country ; but the man is affected with a morbid rever- 
sal of the constitution of human nature who swings on 
a hook because he finds a strange satisfaction in doing 
something which is terribly painful and abhorrent. 
The true nobility of labour and self-denial is reflected 
back on them from a noble end : there is nothing 
fine in accumulating suffering upon ourselves merely 



28o How I Mused in the 

because we hate it, but feel a certain secondary 
pleasure in resolutely submitting to what primarily we 
hate. There is nothing fine in going into a monas- 
tery merely because you would much rather stay out. 
There is nothing fine in going off to America, and 
never asking a woman to be your wife, merely because 
you are very fond of her, and know that all this will 
be a fearful trial to go through. You will be in tnith 
ridiculous, though you may fancy yourself sublime, 
when you are sitting at the door of your log-hut away 
in backwoods lonely as those loved by Daniel Boone, 
and sadly priding yourself on the terrible sacrifice you 
have made. That sacrifice would have been grand 
if it had been your solemn duty to make it; it is 
silly, and it is selfish, if it be made for mere self- 
denial's sake. 

Now a great many people do not remember this. 
David Copperfield was pleased in thinking that he 
was taking so much out of himself He was pleased 
in thinking so, even though no earthly good came of 
his doing all that. His kind aunt was ruined, and he 
was deteniiined that he would deny himself in every 
way that he might not be a burden upon her ; and so 
when he was walking to any place he walked at a 
furious pace, and was glad to find himself growing 
fagged and out of breath, because surely it must be a 
good thing to feel so jaded and miserable. It was 



Railway Train. 281 



self-sacrifice ; it was self-denial. And if to walk at 
five miles and a half an hour had had any tendency 
to. restore his aunt's little fortune, it could not have 
been praised too much ; and the less David liked it, 
the more praise it would have deserved. And I ven- 
ture to think that a good deal of the present talk 
about Muscular Christianity is based upon this error. 
I do not know that exertion of the muscles, as such, 
is necessarily a good or an essentially Christian thing. 
It is good because it promotes health of body and of 
mind ; but you find many books which appear to 
teach that it is a fine thing in itself to leap a horse 
over a five-barred gate, or to crumple up a silver jug, 
or to thrash a prize-fighter. It is very well to thrash 
the prize-fighter if it becomes necessary, but surely it 
would be better to escape the necessity of thrashing 
the prize-fighter.* Certain of the poems of Long- 
fellow, much admired and quoted by young ladies, 
are instinct with the mischievous notion that self- 
denial for mere self-denial's sake is a grand, heroic, 

* To prevent misconception, let me say that I do not allude to the 
doctrine of what is (perhaps foolishly, but expressively) called Muscular 
Christimiity, as taught by Mr. Kingsley ; but to the absurd caricatures of 
the doctrine set forth by several writers who teach the excellence of 
Uiichristia?i Mitsciilarity. With the views of Mr. Kingsley on this subject 
I heartily agree : and I know that there is not a word bearing upon it in the 
essay to which he would not say ' Amen.' But it must ever be the lot of 
men who teach doctrines which, though true and sober, sound at first mention 
new and strange, to have them misrepresented by their opponents, and 
(what is worse) caricatured by their imitators. 



282 Hozv I Mused in the 

and religious thing. The Psalm of Life is extremely 
vague, and somewhat unintelligible. It is philosophi- 
cally false to say that 

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 
Is our destined end or way. 

For, rightly understood, happiness not only is our 
aim, but is plainly intended to be such by our Creator. 
He made us to be happy : the whole bearing of re- 
vealed religion is to make us happy. Of course, the 
man who grasps at selfish enjoyment turns his back 
on happiness. Self-sacrifice and exertion, where 
needful, are the way to happiness ; and the main 
thing which we know of the Christian heaven is, that 
it is a state of happiness. But Longfellow, talking in 
that fashion {no doubt sitting in a large easy-chair by 
a warm fire in a snug study when he did so), wants to 
convey the utterly false notion that there is something 
fine in doing what is disagreeable, merely for the sake 
of doing it. Now, that notion is Bhuddism, but it is 
not Christianity. Christianity says to us, Suffer, 
labour, endure up to martyrdom, when duty calls you ; 
but never fancy that there is anything noble in throwing 
yourself in martyrdom's way. * Thou shalt not tempt 
the Lord thy God.' And as for Longfellow's concep- 
tion of the fellow who went up the Alps, bellowing 
out Excelsior, it is nothing better than childish. Any 



Raihvay Trahi. 283 



one whose mind is matured enough to discern that 
Childe Harold was a humbug, will see that the lad 
was a fool. What on earth was he to do when he got 
to the top of the Alps 1 The poet does not even pre- 
tend to answer that question. He never pretends 
that the lad whose brow was sad, and his eye like a 
falchion, &c., had anything useful or excellent to ac- 
complish when he reached the mountain-top at last. 
Longfellow wishes us to understand that it was a noble 
thing to push onward and upward through the snow, 
merely because it is a very difficult and dangerous 
thing. He wishes us to understand that it was a noble 
thing to turn away from warm household fires to spec- 
tral glaciers, and to resist the invitations of the maiden, 
who, if the lad was a stranger in those parts, as seems 
to be implied, must have been a remarkably free-and- 
easy style of young lady — merely because average 
human nature would have liked extremely to get out 
of the storm to the bright fireside, and to have had a 
quiet chat with the maiden. I don't mean to say that 
about ten years ago I did not think that Excelsior was 
a wonderful poem, setting out a true and noble prin- 
ciple. A young person is captivated with the notion 
of self-sacrifice, with or without a reason for it ; but 
self-sacrifice uncalled for and useless, is stark folly. 
It was very good of Curtius to jump into the large 
hole in the Forum ; no doubt he saved the Senate 



284 How r Mused in the 

great expense in filling it up, though probably it would 
have been easier to do so than to carry the Liverpool 
and Manchester Railway through Chatnioss. And we 
cannot think even yet of Leonidas and his three hun- 
dred at Thermopyte, without some stir of heart ; but 
would not the gallant Lacedaemonians have been silly 
and not heroic, had not their self-sacrifice served a 
great end, by gaining for their countrymen certain 
precious days? Even Dickens, though not much of 
a philosopher, is more philosophic than Longfellow. 
He wrote a little book one Christmas-time, The Battle 
of Life, whose plot turns entirely upon an extraordi- 
nary act of self-sacrifice ; and which contains many 
sentences which sound like the cant of the day. 
Witness the following : — 

It is a world on which the sun never rises, but it looks 
upon a thousand bloodless battles, that are some set-off 
against the miseries and wickedness of battle-fields. 

There are victories gained every day in struggling 
hearts, to which these fields of battle are as nothing. 

But although the book contains such sentences, 
which seem to teach that straggle and self-conquest 
are noble in themselves, apart from their aim or their 
necessity, the lesson taught by the entire story is the 
true and just one, that there is no nobler thing than 
self-sacrifice and self-conquest, when they are right, 
when they are needful, when a noble end is to be 



Raihvay Train. 285 

gained by them. As some dramatist or other 
says — 

That 's truly great ! What, think ye, 'twas set up 
The Greek and Roman names in such a histre, 
But doing right, in stern despite of nature ! 
Shutting their ears 'gainst all her little cries. 
When great, august, and godlike virtue call'd ! 

The author, you see, very justly remarks that you 
are not called to fly in the face of nature, unless when 
there is good reason for it. And therefore, my friend, 
don't get up at seven o'clock on a winter morning, if 
you can possibly help it. If virtue calls, it will indeed 
be noble to rise by candlelight ; but not otherwise. 
If you are the engine-driver of an early train, if you 
are a factory-hand, if you are a Glasgow student of 
philosophy, get up at an unseasonable period, and 
accept the writer's symj^athy and admiration. Poor 
fellow, you cannot help it ! But if you are a Glasgow 
professor, I have no veneration for that needless act 
of self-denial. Yoti need not get up so early unless 
you like. You do the thing of your free choice. 
And your heroism is only that of the Brahmin who 
swings on the hook, when nobody asks him to do so. 

Having mused in this fashion, I look out of the 
carriage window. The morning is breaking, cold and 
dismal. There is a thick white mist. We are flying 



286 How I Mused in the 

on, across gray fields, by spectral houses and trees, 
shewing indistinct through the uncertain light. It is 
light enough to read, by making an effort. I draw 
from my pocket a letter, which came late last night : 
it is from a friend, who is an eminent Editor. I do 
not choose to remember the name of the periodical 
which he conducts. I have had time to do no more 
than glance over it ; and I have not yet arrived at its 
full meaning. I feel as Tony Lumpkin felt, who never 
had the least difficulty in reading the outside of his 
letters, but who found it very hard work to decipher 
the inside. The circumstance was the more annoy- 
ing, he justly observed, inasmuch as the inside of a 
letter generally contains the cream of the correspond- 
ence. 

When I receive a letter from my friend the Editor, 
I am able, by an intense application of attention for 
a few minutes, to make out its general drift and 
meaning. The difficulty in the way of grasping the 
entire sense does not arise from any obscurity of style, 
but wholly from the remarkable nature of the pen- 
manship. And after gaining the general bearing of 
the document, I am well aware that there are many 
recesses and nooks of meaning which will not be 
reached but after repeated perusals. What appeared 
at first a flourish of the pen may gradually assume 
the form of an important clause of a sentence, mate- 



Railway Tram. 287 

rially modifying its force. What appears at present a 
blot, may turn out to be anything whatever ; what 
at present looks Uke No, may prove to have stood for 
Yes. I think sympathetically of the worthy father 
of Dr. Chalmers. When he received his weekly or 
fortnightly letter from his distinguished son, he care- 
fully locked it up. By the time a little store had 
accumulated, his son came to pay him a visit ; and 
then he broke all the seals and got the writer of the 
letters to read them. I read my letter over ; several 
shades of thought break upon me, of whose existence 
in it I was previously unaware. That handwriting is 
like In Memoriam. Read it for the twentieth time, 
and you will find something new in it. I fold the 
letter up ; and I begin to think of a matter concerning 
which I have thought a good deal of late. 

Surely, I think to myself, there is a respect in which 
the more refined and cultivated portion of the human 
race in Britain is suffering a rapid deterioration, and 
getting into a morbid state. I mean in the matter of 
nervous irritability or excitability. Surely people are 
far more nervous now than they used to be some 
generations back. The mental cultivation and the 
mental wear which we have to go through, tends to 
make that strange and inexplicable portion of our 
physical constitution a very great deal too sensitive 
for the work and trial of daily life. A few days ago I 



288 How I Mtised in the 

drove a friend who had been paying us a visit over to 
our railway station. He is a man of fifty, a remark- 
ably able and accomplished man. Before the train 
started the guard came round to look at the tickets. 
My friend could not find his ; he searched his pockets 
everyAvhere ; and although the entire evil consequence, 
had the ticket not turned up, could not possibly have 
been more than the payment a second time of four or 
five shillings, he got into a nervous tremor painful to 
see. He shook from head to foot ; his hand trembled 
so that he could not prosecute his search rightly, and 
finally he found the missing ticket in a pocket which 
he had already searched half-a-dozen times. Now 
contrast the condition of this highly-civilised man, 
thrown into a painful flurry and confusion at the 
demand of a railway ticket, with the impassive cool- 
ness of a savage who would not move a muscle if you 
hacked him in pieces. Is it not a dear price we pay 
for our superior cultivation, this morbid sensitiveness 
which makes us so keenly alive to influences which 
are painful and distressing? I have known very 
highly educated people who were positively trembling 
with anxiety and undefined fear every day before the 
post came in. Yet they had no reason to anticipate 
bad news ; they could conjure up indeed a hundred 
gloomy forebodings of evil, but no one knew better 
than themselves how vain and weak were their fears. 



Railway Train. 289 

Surely the knights of old must have been quite dif- 
ferent. They had great stalwart bodies, and no minds 
to speak of They had no doubt a high sense of 
honour — not a very enlightened sense — but their 
purely intellectual nature was hardly developed at 
all. They never read anything. There were not 
many knights or squires like Fitz- Eustace, who 

Much had pored 
Upon a huge romantic tome, 
In the hall window of his home, 
Imprinted at the antique dome 
Of Caxton or De Worde. 

They never speculated upon any abstract subject : 
and although in their long rides from place to place 
they might have had time for thinking, I suppose 
their attention was engrossed by the necessity of 
having a sharp look-out around them for the appear- 
ance of a foe. And we all know that that kind of 
sharpness — the hunter's sharpness, the guerilla's sharp- 
ness — may coexist with the densest stupidity in all 
matters beyond the little range that is familiar. The 
aboriginal Australian can trace friend or foe with the 
keenness almost of brute instinct : so can the Red 
Indian, so can the Wild Bushman ; yet the intellectual 
and moral nature in all these races is not very many 
degrees above the elephant or the shepherd's dog. 
And stupidity is a great preservative against nervous 



290 How I Mused in the 

excitability or anxiety. A dull man cannot think of 
the thousand sad possibilities which the quicker mind 
sees are brooding over human life. Nor does this 
friendly stupidity only dull the understanding ; it gives 
inertia, immobility, to the emotional nature. Compare 
a pure thoroughbred horse with a huge heavy cart- 
horse without a trace of breeding. The thoroughbred 
is a beautiful creature indeed : but look at the startled 
eye, look at the quick ears, look at the blood coursing 
through those great veins so close to the surface, look 
how tremblingly alive the creature is to any sudden 
sight or sound. Why, there you have got the per- 
fection of equine nature, but you have paid for it just 
the same price that you pay for the perfection of hu- 
man nature — ^what a nervous creature you have there ! 
Then look at the cart-horse. It is clumsy in shape, 
ungraceful in movement, rough in skin, dull of eye ; 
in short, it is a great ugly brute. But what a placid 
equanimity there is about it ! How composed, how 
immovable it looks, standing with its head hanging 
down, and its eyes half closed ! It is a low type of its 
race no doubt, but it enjoys the blessing which is en- 
joyed by the dull, stupid, unrefined woman or man ; 
it is not nervous. Let something fall with a whack, 
/'/ does not start as if it had been shot. Throw a 
little pebble at its flank, it turns round tranquilly to 
see what is the matter. Why, the thoroughbred would 



Raihvay Train. 291 



have been over that hedge at much less provoca- 
tion. 

The morbid nervousness of the present day appears 
in several ways. It brings a man sometimes to that 
startled state that the sudden opening of a door, the 
clash of the falling fire-irons, or any little accident, 
puts him in a flutter. How nervous the late Sir 
Robert Peel must have been when, a {^.w weeks before 
his death, he went to the Zoological Gardens, and 
when a monkey suddenly sprang upon his arm, the 
great and worthy man fainted ! Another phase of 
nervousness is when a man is brought to that state 
that the least noise or cross-occurrence seems to jar 
through the entire nervous system— to upset him, as 
we say ; when he cannot command his mental powers 
except in perfect stillness, or in the chamber and at 
the writing-table to which he is accustomed ; when, 
in short, he gets fidgety, easily worried, full of whims 
and fancies which must be indulged and considered, 
or he is quite out of sorts. Another phase of the 
same morbid condition is, when a human being is 
always oppressed with vague undefined fears that 
things are going wrong ; that his income will not 
meet the demands upon it, that his child's lungs are 
affected, that his mental powers are leaving him— a 
state of feeling which shades rapidly off" into positive 
insanity. Indeed, when matters remain long in any 



292 How I Mused in the 



of the fashions which have been described, I suppose 
the natural termination must be disease of the heart, 
or a shock of paralysis, or insanity in the form either 
of mania or idiocy. Numbers of commonplace people 
who could feel very acutely, but who could not tell 
what they felt, have been worried into fatal heart- 
disease by prolonged anxiety and misery. Every one 
knows how paralysis laid its hand upon Sir Walter 
Scott, always great, lastly heroic. Protracted anxiety 
how to make the ends meet, with a large family and 
an uncertain income, drove Southey's first wife into 
the lunatic asylum : and there is hardly a more 
touching story than that of her fears and forebodings 
through nervous year after year. Not less sad was 
the end of her overwrought husband, in blank va- 
cuity ; nor the like end of Thomas Moore. And 
perhaps the saddest instance of the result of an over- 
driven nervous system, in recent days, was the end of 
that rugged, honest, wonderful genius, Hugh Miller. 

Is it a reaction, a desperate rally against something 
that is felt to be a powerful invader, that makes it so 
much a point of honour with Englishmen at this day 
to retain, or appear to retain, a perfect immobility 
under all circumstances % It is pretty and interesting 
for a lady, at all events for a young lady, to exliibit 
her nervous tremors ; a man sternly represses the ex- 
hibition of these. Stoic philosophy centuries since, 



Railway Train. 



293 



and modem refinement in its last polish of manner, 
alike recognise the Red Indian's principle, that there 
is something manly, something fine, in the repression 
of human feeling. Here is a respect in which the 
extreme of civilisation and the extreme of barbarism 
closely approach one another. The Red Indian 
really did not care for anything; the modem fine 
gentleman, the youthful exquisite, though really pretty 
nervous, wishes to convey by his entire deportment 
the impression, that he does not care for anything. 
A man is to exhibit no strong emotion. It is unmanly. 
If he is glad, he must not look it. If he loses a great 
deal more money than he can afford on the Derby, he 
must take it coolly. Everything is to be taken coolly: 
and some indurated folk no doubt are tmly as cool as 
they look. Let me have nothing to do with such. 
Nil admirari is not a good maxim for a man. The 
coolest individual who occurs to me at this moment 
is Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust. He was not a 
pleasant character. That coolness is not human. It 
is essentially Satanic. But in many people in modern 
days the apparent coolness covers a most painful ner- 
vousness. Indeed, as a general rule, whenever any 
one does anything which is (socially speaking) out- 
rageously daring, it is because he is nervous ; and 
struggling with the feeling, and striving to conceal the 
fact. A speaker who is too forward, who is jauntily 



294 How I Mused in the 

free and easy, is certainly very nervous. And though 
I have said that perfect coohiess in all circumstances 
is not amiable or desirable, still one cannot look but 
with interest, if not with sympathy, at Campbell's fine 
description of the Red Indian: — 

He said, — and strain'd unto his heart the boy :— 
Far differently, the mute Oneyda took 
His calumet of peace and cup of joy : 
As monumental bronze unchanged his look ; 
A soul that pity touch'd, but never shook ; 
Train'd from his tree-rock'd cradle to his bier 
The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook 
Impassive — fearing but the shame of fear, — 
A Stoic of the woods, — a man without a tear ! 

The writings of Mr. Dickens furnish me with a com- 
panion picture adapted to modern times. I confess 
that, upon reflection, I doubt whether a considerable 
portion of the interest of OutaUssi's peculiar manner 
may not be derived from distance in time and space. 
Indian immobility and stoical philosophy are not 
sublime in the servants' hall of modern society : — 

' I don't know anything,' said Britain, with a leaden eye 
and an immovable visage. ' I don't care for anything. 
I don't make out anything. I don't believe anything. 
And I don't want anything.'* 

Nervous people should live in large towns. The 
houses are so big, and afford such impervious shadow, 

* The Battle of Life ; Christmas Books, p. 169. 



Railway Train. 295 



that the nervous man, very little when compared with 
them, does not feel himself pushed into painful pro- 
minence. It is a comfort, too, to see many other 
people going about. It carries the nervous man out 
of himself It reminds him that multitudes more have 
their cares as well as he. It dispels the uncomfortable 
feeling which grows on such people in the country, that 
everybody is thinking and talking of them, — to see 
numbers of men and women, all quite occupied with 
their own concerns, and evidently never thinking of 
them at all. 

I have known one of these shrinking and evil-fore- 
boding persons say, that he could not have lived in 
the country (as he did) had not the district where his 
home was been very thickly wooded with large trees. 
It was a comfort to a man who wished to shrink out 
of sight and get quietly by, when the road along which 
he was Avalking wound into a thick wood. The trees 
were so big and so old, and they seemed to make a 
shelter from the outer world. In walking over a vast 
bare level down, a man is the most conspicuous figure 
in the landscape. There is nothing taller than himself, 
and he can be seen from miles away. Now, to be 
pushed into notice — to be made a conspicuous figure 
— is intensely painful to the nervous man. You and 
I, my reader, no doubt think such a state of feeling 
morbid, but it is probably a state to which circum- 



296 Hozv I Mused in the Railway Train. 

stances might bring most people. And we can quite 
well understand, that when pressed by care, sorrow, or 
fear, there is something friendly in the shade of trees 
— in anything that dims the light, and hides from pub- 
lic view. You remember the poor fellow (a very silly 
fellow indeed, but very silly fellows can suffer) who 
asked Little Dorrit to marry him, and met a decided 
though a kind refusal. He lived somewhere over in 
Southwark, in a street of poor houses, which had little 
back-greens, but of course no trees in them. But the 
poor fellow felt the instinctive longing of the stricken 
heart for shadow ; and so, when his mother hung out 
the clothes from the wash on ropes crossing and re- 
crossing the little green, he used to go out and sit amid 
the flapping sheets, and say that 'he felt it like groves !^ 
Was not that a testimony to the friendly congeniality 
of trees to the sad or timorous human being ? And 
when Cowper wearied to get away from a turbulent 
world to some quiet retreat, he did not wish that that 
retreat should be in an open country. No, he says — 

Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness. 
Some boundless contiguity of shade, 
Where rumour of oppression and deceit. 
Of unsuccessful or successful war. 
Might never reach me more ! 

To the same effect did the same shrinking poet 
express himself in lines equally familiar : — 




THE 'victory.' 

I was a stricken deer that left the herd 
Long since : with many an arrow deep infix'd 
My panting side was charged, when I withdrew 
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. 

I suppose that if some heavy blow had fallen upon 
any of us, we should not choose the open field or the 
bare hillside as the place to which we should go to 
think about it. We should rather choose some low- 
lying, sheltered, shaded spot. Great sorrow does not 
parade itself. It wishes to get out of sight. 

As to the question how this nervousness may be 
got rid of, it is difficult to know what to think. It 
is in great measure a physical condition, and not 
under the control of the will. Some people would 
treat it physically — send the nervous man to the 
water-cure, — put him in training like a prize-fighter 



298 How I Mused in the 

or a pedestrian, and the like. These are excellent 
things ; still I have greater confidence in mental 
remedies. Give the evil-foreboding man plenty to 
do ; push him out of his quiet course of life into the 
turmoil which he shrinks away from, and the turmoil 
will lose its fears. Work is the healthy atmosphere 
for a human being. The soul of man is a machine 
with this great peculiarity about it, — that we cannot 
stop it from motion when we will. Perhaps that is a 
defect. Many a man, through a weary sleepless night, 
has longed for the power to push some lever or catch 
into the swift-running engine that was whirring away 
within him, and bring it to a stand. However, it 
cannot be. And as the machine tvill go on, we must 
provide it with grist to grind, we must give it work to 
do, or it will knock itself in pieces \ or if not that, then 
get all warped and twisted, so that it never shall go 
without creaking, and straining, and trembling. And 
so, if you find a man or woman, young or old, vexed 
with ceaseless fears, worried with all kinds of odd 
ideas, doubts upon religious matters, and the like, 
don't argue with them ; that is not the treatment that 
is necessary in the meantime. There is something 
else to be done first. It would do no good to blister 
a horse's legs till the previous inflammation has gone 
down. It will do no good to present the soundest 
views to a nervous, idle man. Set him to hard work. 



Railway Train, 299 

Give him lots to do. And then that invisible machine, 
which has been turning off misery and delusion, will 
begin to turn off content and sound views of all 
things. After two or three weeks of this healthful 
treatment you may proceed to argue with your friend. 
In all likelihood you will find that argument will not 
be necessary. He has arrived at truth and sense 
already. There is a wonderfully close connexion be- 
tween work and sound views ; between doing and know- 
ing. It is in life as it is in religion : ' If any man will 
do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it 
be of God.' 

Looking out now, I see it has grown quite light, 
though the day is gloomy, and will be so to its close. 
The train is speeding round the base of a great hill. 
Far below us a narrow little river is dashing on, all in 
foam. Its sound is faintly heard at this height. I 
said to myself, by way of winding up my musing upon 
nervousness : After all, is not this painful fact just an 
over-degree of that which makes us living beings ? 
Is it not just life too sensitively present in every atom 
of even the dull flesh % There is that gray rock which 
we are passing ; how still and immovable it is ! 
All the stoicism of Greece, all the impassiveness of 
the mute Oneyda, all the indifference of the poco- 
curante Englishman, how far they fall short of that 
sublime stillness ! But it is still because it is sense- 



300 How I Mused in tJte 



less. It looks as if it felt nothing, because it really 
feels nothing. I compare it with Lord Derby before 
he gets up to make a great speech ; fidgeting on his 
seat ; watching every movement and word of the man 
he is going to smash ; his wonderfully ready mind 
working with a whirr like wheel-work revolving un- 
seen through its speed ; living intensely, in fact, in 
every fibre of his frame. Well, that is the finer thing, 
after all. The big cart-horse, already thought of, 
is something midway between the Premier and the 
granite. The stupid blockhead is cooler than the 
Premier, indeed ; but he is not so cool as the granite. 
If coolness be so fine a thing, of course the perfection 
of coolness must be the finest thing ; and that we find 
in the lifeless rock. What is life but that which makes 
us more sensitive than the rock : what is the highest 
type of life but that which makes us most sensitive % 
It is better to be the warm, trembling, foreboding 
human being, than to be Ben Nevis, knowing nothing, 
feeling nothing, fearing nothing — cold and lifeless. 

It is natural enough to pass from thinking of one 
human weakness to thinking of another ; and certain 
remarks of a fellow-traveller, not addressed to me, 
suggest the inveterate tendency to vapouring and big 
talking which dwells in many men and women. Who 
is there who desires to appear to his fellow-creatures 



Railway Train. 301 



precisely what he is ? I have known such people and 
admired them, for they are comparatively few. Why 
does Mr. Smith, when some hundreds of miles from 
home, talk of his place in the country % In the ety- 
mological sense of the words it certainly is a place 
in the country, for it is a seedy one-storied cottage 
without a tree near it, standing bleakly on a hillside. 
But a place in the country suggests to the mind long 
avenues, great shrubberies, extensive greenhouses, fine 
conservatories, lots of horses, abundance of servants ; 
and that is the picture which Mr. Smith desires to 
call up before the mind's eye of those whom he 
addresses. When Mr. Robinson talks with dignity 
about the political discussions which take place in 
his servants' hall, the impression conveyed is that 
Robinson has a vast establishment of domestics. A 
vision rises of ancient retainers, of a dignified house- 
keeper, of a bishop-like butler, of Jeameses without 
number, of unstinted October. A man of strong 
imagination may even think of huntsmen, falconers, 
couriers — of a grand baronial menage, in fact. You 
would not think that Robinson's establishment con- 
sists of a cook, a housemaid, and a stable-boy. Very 
well for the fellow too; but why will he vapour? 
Wlien Mr. Jones told, me the other day that some- 
thing or other happened to him when he was going 
out ' to the stables to look at the horses,' I naturally 



302 How I Mused in the 

thought, as one fond of horseflesh, that it would be a 
fine sight to see Jones's stables, as he called them. I 
thought of three handsome carriage-horses sixteen 
hands high, a pair of pretty ponies for his wife to 
drive, some hunters, beauties to look at and tremen- 
dous fellows to go. The words used might even have 
justified the supposition of two or three racehorses, 
and several lads with remarkably long jackets walking 
about the yard. I was filled with fury when I learned 
that Jones's horses consisted of a large brougham- 
horse, broken-winded, and a spavined pony. I have 
known a man who had a couple of moorland farms 
habitually talk of his estate. One of the commonest 
and weakest ways of vapouring is by introducing into 
your conversation, very familiarly, the names of 
people of rank whom you know nothing earthly 
about. ' How sad it is,' said Mrs. Jenkins to me the 
other day, ' about the duchess being so ill ! Poor 
dear thing ! We are all in such great distress about 
her ! ' ' JVe all ' meant, of course, the landed aristo- 
cracy of the district, of which Mrs. Jenkins had lately 
become a member, Jenkins having retired from the 
hardware line and bought a small tract of quagmire. 
Some time ago a man told me that he had been down 
to Oatmealshire to see his tenantry. Of course he 
was not aware that I knew that he was the owner of 
just one farm. 'This is my parish we have entered,' 



Raihvay Train. 303 



said a youth of clerical appearance to me in a railway 
carriage. In one sense it was ; but he would not 
have said so had he been aware that I knew he was 
the curate, not the rector, ' How can Brown and his 
wife get on"?' a certain person observed to me ; 'they 
cannot possibly live : they will starve. Think of 
l^eople getting married with not more than eight or 
nine hundred a-year ! ' How dignified the man 
thought he looked as he made the remark ! It was 
a fine thing to represent that he could not understand 
how human beings could do what he was well aware 
was done by multitudes of wiser people than himself. 
'It is a cheap horse that of Wiggins's,' remarked Mr. 
Figgins ; ' it did not cost more than seventy or eighty 
pounds.' Poor silly Figgins fancies that all who hear 
him will conclude that his own broken-kneed hack 
(bought for j£2^) cost at least _£iS°- Oh, silly folk 
who talk big, and then think you are adding to your 
importance, don't you know that you are merely 
making fools of yourselves ? In nine cases out of ten 
the person to whom you are relating your exaggerated 
story knows what the precise fact is. He is too polite 
to contradict you and to tell you the truth, but rely 
on it he knows it. No one believes the vapouring 
story told by another man ; no, not even the man 
who fancies that his own vapouring story is believed. 
Every one who knows anything of the world knows 



304 How I Mused in the 

how, by an accompanying process of mental arith- 
metic, to make the deductions from the big story 
told, which will bring it down to something near the 
truth. Frequently has my friend Mr. Snooks told me 
of the crushing retort by which he shut up Jeffrey 
upon a memorable occasion. I can honestly declare 
that I never gave credence to a syllable of what he 
said. Repeatedly has my friend Mr. Longbow told 
me of his remarkable adventure in the Bay of Biscay, 
when a whale very nearly swallowed him. Never once 
did I fail to listen with every mark of implicit belief 
to my friend's narrative, but do you think I believed 
it? And more than once has Mrs. O'Callaghan as- 
sured me that the hothouses on her fawther's esteet 
were three miles in length, and that each cluster of 
grapes grown on that favoured spot weighed above a 
hundredweight. With profound respect I gave ear 
to all she said ; but, gentle daughter of Erin, did you 
think I was as soft as I seemed % You may just as 
well tell the truth at once, ye big talkers, for every- 
body will know it, at any rate. 

It is a sad pity when parents, by a long course of 
big talking, and silly pretension, bring up their 
children with ideas of their own importance which 
make them appear ridiculous, and which are rudely 
dissipated on their entering into life. The mother of 
poor Lollipop, when he went to Cambridge, told me 



Raikvay Train. 305 



that his genius was such that he was sure to be Senior 
Wrangler. And possibly he might have been if he 
had not been plucked. 

It is peculiarly irritating to be obliged to listen to 
a vapouring person pouring out a string of silly ex- 
aggerated stories, all tending to shew how great the 
vapouring person is. Politeness forbids your stating 
that you don't believe them. I have sometimes de- 
rived comfort under such an infliction from making a 
memorandum, mentally, and then, like Captain Cuttle, 
' making a note ' on the earliest opportunity. By 
taking this course, instead of being irritated by each 
successive stretch, you are rather gratified by the 
number and the enormity of them. I hereby give 
notice to all ladies and gentlemen whose conscience 
tells them that they are accustomed to vapour, that 
it is not improbable that I have in my possession a 
written list of remarkable statements made by them. 
It is possible that they would look rather blue if they 
were permitted to see it. 

Let me add, that it is not always vapouring to talk 
of one's self, even in terms which imply a compliment. 
It was not vapouring when Lord Tenterden, being 
Lord Chief-Justice of England, standing by Canterbury 
Cathedral with his son by his side, pointed to a little 
barber's shop, and said to the boy, ' I never feel 
proud except when I remember that in that shop your 

X 



306 Hozv I Mused in the 

grandfather shaved for a penny ! ' It was not vapour- 
ing when Burke wrote, ' I was not rocked, and swad- 
dled, and dandled into a legislator : Nitor in adversum 
is the motto for a man like me !' It was not vapour- 
ing when Milton wrote that he had in himself a con- 
viction that 'by labour and intent study, which he 
took to be his portion in this life, he might leave to 
after ages something so written as that men should 
not willingly let it die.' Nor was it vapouring, but 
a pleasing touch of nature, when the King of Siam 
begged our ambassador to assure Queen Victoria that 
a letter which he sent to her, in the English language, 
was composed and written entirely by himself. It is 
not vapouring, kindly reader, when, upon your return 
home after two or three days' absence, your little son, 
aged four years, climbs upon your knee, and begs you 
to ask his mother if he has not been a very good boy 
when you were away ; nor when he shews you, with 
great pride, the medal which he has won a few years 
later. It is not vapouring when the gallant man who 
heroically jeopardied life and limb for the women's and 
children's sake at Lucknow, wears the Victoria Cross 
over his brave heart. Nor is it a piece of national 
vapouring, though it is, sure enough, an appeal to 
proud remembrances, when England preserves reli- 
giously the stout old Vicfo?y, and points strangers to 
the spot where Nelson fell and died. 



Railway Train. 



307 



But a shrieking whistle yells in my car : my mus- 
ings are suddenly pulled up. The hundred miles are 
traversed : the train is slackening its speed. It was 
half-past seven when we started : it is now about half- 
past eleven. We draw alongside the platform : there 
are faces I know. I see a black head over the 
palisade : that is my horse. It would be vapouring 
to say that my carriage awaits me : for though it has 
four wheels, it is drawn by no more than four legs. 
Drag out a portmanteau from under the seat, exchange 
a cap for a hat, open the door, jump out, bundle away 
home. And then, perhaps, I may tell some unknown 
friends who have the patience to read my essays, Hoiv 
I mused m the railway train. 







.-Vs^.V^^ '''JwjIush 13 CRASS '15- 



I REST IN HOPE. 




BAHSHAM. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CONCERNING THE MORAL INFLUENCES OF THE 
DWELLING. 

WHEN tlie great Emperor Napoleon was packed 
off to Elba, he had, as was usual with him, a 
sharp eye to theatrical effect. Indeed, that distinguished 
man, during the period of his great elevation as well as 



TJic Moral Influences of the Dwelling. 309 

of his great downfall, was subject, in a degree almost 
unexampled, to the tyranny of a principle which in the 
case of commonplace people finds expression in the 
representative inquiry, ' What will Mrs. Grundy say % ' 
Whenever Napoleon was about to do anything par- 
ticular, or was actually doing anything particular, he was 
always thinking to himself, ' What will Mrs. Grundy 
say 1 ' Of course /lis Mrs. Grundy was a much bigger 
and much more important individual than your Mrs. 
Grundy, my reader. Your Mrs. Grundy is the ill- 
natured, tattling old tabby who lives round the corner, 
and whose window you feel as much afraid to pass as 
if it were a battery commanding the pavement, and 
as if the ugly old woman's baleful eyes were so many 
Lancaster guns. Or perhaps your Mrs. Grundy is the 
good-natured friend (as described by Mr. Sheridan) 
who is always ready to tell you of anything he has 
heard to your disadvantage, but who would not for 
the world repeat to you any kind or pleasant remark, 
lest the vanity thereby fostered should injuriously 
affect your moral development. But Napoleon's Mrs. 
Grundy consisted of Great Britain and Ireland, Russia, 
Prussia, Austria, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, 
Norway, Switzerland, the United States ; in brief, to 
Napoleon, Mrs. Grundy meant Europe, Asia, Africa, 
and America. And really when a man is asking him- 
self what the whole civilised world will think and say 



3 1 o TJie Moral Influences 

about what he is doing, and when he feels quite sure 
that it will think and say something^ it is excusable if in 
what he does he has an eye to what Mrs. Grundy will 
think and say. 

Accordingly, when the great Emperor was forced 
to exchange the imperial throne of France for the 
sovereignty of that little speck in the Mediterranean, 
his first and most engrossing reflection on his journey 
to Elba was. What will Mrs. Grundy say ? And many 
thoughts not very pleasant to an ambitious man of 
unphilosophical temperament would be suggested by 
the question. He would naturally think, Mrs. Grundy 
will be chuckling over my downfall. Mrs. Grundy 
will be saying that I, and all my aspirations and 
hopes, have been fearfully smashed. Mrs. Grundy 
will be saying that it serves me right for my im- 
pudence. Mrs. Grundy will be saying (kindly) that 
it will do me a great deal of good. Amiable and 
benevolent old lady ! Mrs. Grundy will be saying 
that I am now going away to my exile in very low 
spirits, feeling very bitter, very much disappointed, 
very thoroughly humbled, — going away (only Na- 
poleon had not read Swift) in the extremity of im- 
potent fury, to ' die in a rage, like a poisoned rat in 
a hole.' Mrs. Grundy will be saying that when I get 
to Elba finally, I shall lead a poor life there ; kicking 
about the dogs and cats, swearing at the servants, 



of the Dwelling. 311 



whacking the horses viciously, perhaps even throwing 
plates at the attendants' heads. Such, the Emperor 
would think, will be the sayings of Mrs. Grundy. 
And the Emperor, not a man of resigned or phi- 
losophical temper, would know that in all this Mrs. 
Grundy would be nearly right. But at all events, 
says Napoleon to himself, she shall not have the 
satisfaction of thinking that she is so. I shall mortify 
Mrs. Grundy by making her think that I am perfectly 
jolly. I shall get her to believe that all this humilia- 
tion which she has heaped upon me is impotent to 
touch me where I can really feel. She shall think 
that she has not found the raw. And so, when 
Napoleon settled at Elba, — stamped upon his coin, 
engraven upon his silver plate, emblazoned on his 
carnage panels, written upon his very china and 
crockery, — there blazed forth in Mrs. Grundy's view 
the defiant words, Ubicimqtie felix I 

Now, had Mrs. Grundy had much philosophic 
insight into human conduct and motives, she would 
have known that her purpose of humiliation and 
embittemient was attained, and that all her ill-set 
sayings had proved right. It was because in Elba 
the great exile was a bitterly disappointed man, that 
he so ostentatiously paraded before the world the 
assurance that he was ' happy anywhere.' It was be- 
cause he thought so much of Mrs. Grundy, and attached 



so much importance to what she might say, that he 
hung out this flag of defiance. If he had really been 
as happy and as independent of outward circumstances 
as he said he was, he would not have taken the trouble 
to say so. Had Napoleon said nothing about himself, 
but begim to grow cabbages and train flowers, and 
grown fat and rosy, we should not have needed the 
motto. But if any man, Emperor or not, trumpet 
forth on the housetops that he is tibicunqne felix ; and 
if we find him walking moodily by the sea-shore, Avith 
a knitted brow and absent air, and a very poor 
appetite ; why, my reader, the answer to his statement 
may be conveyed, inarticulately, by a low and pro- 
longed whistle ; or articulately, by an advice to address 
that statement to the marines. 

If there be a thing which I detest, it is a diffuse and 
rambling style. Let any writer always treat his subject 
in a manner terse and severely logical. My own model 
is Tacitus, and the earlier writings of Bacon. Let a 
man say in a straightforward way what he has got to 
say ; and the more briefly the better. And above all, 
young writer, avoid that fashion which is set by the 
leading articles of the Times, of beginning your ob- 
servations u])on a subject with something which to 
the ordinaiy mind appears to have nothing earthly 
to do with it. By carefully carrying out the advice 
here tendered to you, you may ultimately, after several 



of tliQ Dwelling. 3 1 3 



years of practice, attain to a limited success as an 
obscure third-rate essayist. 

Napoleon, then (to resume our argument after this 
little excursus), paraded before the world the declara- 
tion that it did not matter to him where he might be ; 
he would be 'happy anywhere.' What tremendous 
nonsense he talked ! Why, setting aside altogether 
such great causes of difference as an unhealthy climate, 
stupid society or no society at all, usefulness or use- 
lessness, honour or degradation, — I do not hesitate to 
say that the scenery amid which a man lives, and the 
house in which he lives, have a vast deal to do with 
making him what he is. The same man (to use an 
expression which is only seemingly Hibernian) is an 
entirely different man when put in a different place. 
Life is in itself a neutral thing, colourless and tasteless; 
it takes its colour and its flavour from the scenes amid 
which we lead it. It is like water, which external 
influences may make the dirtiest or cleanest, the 
bitterest or sweetest, of all things. Life, character, 
feeling, are things very greatly dependent on external 
influences. In a larger sense than the common saying 
is usually understood, we are ' the creatures of circum- 
stances.' Only very stolid people are not affected by 
the scenes in which they live. I do not mean to say 
that an appreciable difference will be produced on a 
man's character by varied classes of scenery ; that is, 



3 14 TJie Moral Injltiences 

that the same man will be appreciably different, 
morally, according as you place him for days on a 
rocky, stormy coast ; on a level sandy shore ; inland 
in a fertile wooded country ; inland among bleak wild 
hills ; among Scotch firs with their long bare poles ; 
horse-chestnuts blazing with their June blossoms ; or 
thick full laurels, and yews, and hollies, thick to the 
ground, and shutting an external world out. I do not 
mean to say that ordinary people will feel any appreci- 
able variation of the moral and spiritual atmosphere, 
traceable for its cause to such variety of scene. A man 
must be fashioned of very delicate clay, he must have a 
nervous system very sensitive, morbidly sensitive, per- 
haps, if such things as these very decidedly determine 
what he shall be, morally and intellectually, for the 
time. Yet no doubt such matters have upon many 
human beings a real effect. If you live in a country 
house into whose grounds you enter through a battle- 
mented gateway under a lofty arch ; if the great leaves of 
the massive oak and iron gate are swung back to admit 
you, as you pass from the road outside to the seques- 
tered pleasance within, where the grass, the gravel, 
the evergreens, the flowers, the winding paths, the 
little pond, the noisy little brook that passes beneath 
the rustic bridge, are all cut off from the outer world 
by a tall battlemented wall, too tall for leaping or 
looking over, — I think that, at first at least, you will 



of the Dwelling. 3 1 5 

have a different feeling all day, you will be a different 
man all day, for that arched gateway and that battle- 
mented wall. You will not feel as if you had come 
in by a common five-bar gate, painted green, hung 
from freestone pillars five or six feet high, and shaded 
with laurels. It is wonderful what an effect is pro- 
duced upon many minds by even a single external 
circumstance such as that ; nor can I admit that there 
is anything morbid in the mind which is affected by 
such things. A very little thing, a solitary outward 
fact, may, by the influence of associations not neces- 
sarily personal, become ideahsed into something whose 
flavour reaches, Hke salt in cookery, perceptibly 
through all life. 'You may laugh as you please,' 
says one of the most thoughtful and delightful of 
English essayists, ' but life seems somewhat insup- 
portable to me without a pond — a squarish pond, not 
over clean.' You and I do not know, my readers, 
what early recollections may have made such a little 
piece of water something whose presence shall appre- 
ciably affect the genial philosopher's feeling day by 
day, and hour by hour. The savour of its presence 
(I don't speak materially) may reach everywhere. 
And if there be anything which that writer is not, 
he is not morbid ; and he is not fanciful in the sense 
in which a fanciful person means a chronicler of 
morbid impressions. And we all remember the little 



3 1 6 The Moral Influences 

child in Wordsworth's poem, who jDersisted in ex^Dress- 
ing a decided preference for one place in the country 
above another which appeared likely to have greater 
attractions ; and who, when pressed for his reasons, 
did, after much reflection, fix upon a single fact as the 
cause of his preference : — 

At Kilve there was no weathercock ; 
And that 's the reason why. 

No one can tell how that weathercock may have 
obtruded itself upon the little man's dreams, or how 
thoroughly its presence may have permeated all his 
hfe. I know a little child, three years and a half old, 
whose entire life for many weeks appeared embittered 
by the presence of a dinner-bell upon the hall-table 
of her home. She could not be induced to go near 
it ; she trembled with terror when she heard it rung : 
it fulfilled for her the part of Mr. Thackeray's famous 
skeleton. And I am very sure that we have all of us 
dinner-bells and weathercocks which haunt and worry 
us, and squarish ponds which give a savour to our life. 
And fpr any ordinary mortal to say that he is ttbicuu- 
qne felix is pure nonsense. Napoleon found it was 
nonsense even at Elba ; and at St. Helena he found it 
yet more distinctly. No man can say truly that he is 
the same wherever he goes. That sublime elevation 
above outward circumstances is not attainable by 
beings all of whom are half, and a great many of 



of the Dwelling. 3 1 7 

whom are a good deal more than half, material. We 
are all moral chameleons ; and we take the colour of 
the objects among which we are placed. 

Here am I this morning, writing on busily. I am 
all alone in a quiet little study. The prevailing colour 
around me is green — the chairs, tables, couches, book- 
cases, are all of oak, rich in colour, and growing 
dark through age, but green predominates : window- 
curtains, table-covers, carpet, rug, covers of chairs 
and couches, are green. I look through the window, 
which is some distance off, right before me. The 
window is set in a frame of green leaves : it looks out 
on a quiet corner of the garden. There is a wall not 
far off green with ivy and other climbing plants ; there 
is a bright little bit of turf like emerald, and a clump 
of evergreens varying in shade. Over the wall I see 
a round green hill, crowned by oaks which autumn 
has not begun to make sere. How quiet everything 
is ! I am in a comparatively remote part of the 
house, and there is no sound of household life ; no 
pattering of little feet ; no voices of servants in discus- 
sion less logical and calm than might be desired. The 
timepiece above the fireplace ticks audibly ; the fire 
looks sleepy ; and I know that I may sit here all day 
if I please, no one intermpting me. No man worth 
speaking of will spend his ordinary day in idleness ; 
but it is pleasant to think that one may divide one's 



3 1 8 TJie Moral Influences 

time and portion out one's day at one's own will and 
pleasure. Such a mode of life is still possible in this 
country : we do not all as yet need to live in a cease- 
less hurry, ever drive, driving on till the worn-out 
machine breaks down. By and by this life of un- 
feverish industry, and of work whose results are 
tangible only to people of cultivation, will no doubt 
cease ; and it will tend materially to hasten that con- 
summation when the views of the Thnes are carried 
out, and all the country clergy are required to keep a 
diary like a rural policeman, shewing how each hour 
of their time is spent, and open to the inspection of 
their employers. Now, in a quiet scene like this, 
where there is not even the little noise of a village near, 
though I can hear the murmur of a pretty large river, 
must not the ordinary human being be a very different 
being from what he would be were he sitting in some 
gas-lighted counting-house in Manchester, turning 
over large vellum-bound volumes, adding long rows 
of figures, talking on sales and prices to a hundred 
and fifty people in the course of the day, looking out 
through the window upon a foggy atmosphere, a 
muddy pavement, a crowded street, huge drays lum- 
bering by with their great horses, with a general im- 
pression of noise, hurry, smoke, dirt, confusion, and 
no rest or peace % It would be an interesting thing 
for some one equal to the task to go over Addison's 



of the Dwelling. 3 1 Q 

papers in the Spectator, and try to make out the 
shade of difiference in them which might be con- 
ceived as resulting from the influences of the place 
where they were severally written. It is generally 
understood that the well-known letters by which 
Addison distinguished his essays referred to the 
places where they were composed ; the letters in the 
Clio indicating Chelsea, London, Islington, and the 
Office. Did the sensitive, shy genius feel that in the 
production dated from each scene there would be 
some trace of what Yankees call the surroundings 
amid which it was produced % No doubt a mind like 
Addison's, impassive as he was, would turn off very 
different material according to the conditions in 
which the machine was working. As for Dick Steele, 
probably it made very little difference to him where 
he was : at the coffee-house table, with noise and 
bustle all about him, he would write as quietly as 
though he had been quietly at home. He was indu- 
rated by long usage ; the hide of a hippopotamus is not 
sensitive to gentle influences which would be felt by 
your soft hand, my fair friend. But in the case of 
ordinaiy educated men there is no greater fallacy 
than that suggested by that vile old subject for Latin 
themes, that ca'lum, 7ion animum mutant, qui trans 
mare currunt. Ordinary people, in changing the 
ca'lum, undergo a great change of the animus too. A 



320 The Moral hijiucnccs 

judicious man would be extremely afraid of marrying 
any girl in England, and forthwith taking her out to 
India with him ; for it would be quite certain that 
she would be a very different person there from what 
she had been here; and how different and in what 
mode altered and varied only experience could shew. 
So one might marry one woman in Yorkshire, and 
live with quite another at Boggley-woUah ; and in 
marriage it is at least desirable to know what it is 
you are getting. Every one knows people who are 
quite different people according as they are in town 
or country. I know a man — an exceedingly clever 
and learned man — who in town is sharp, severe, 
hasty, a very little bitter, and just a shade ill- 
tempered, who on going to the country becomes 
instantly genial, frank, playful, kind, and jolly : you 
would not know him for the same man if his face and 
form changed only half as much as his intellectual 
and moral nature. Many men, when they go to the 
country, just as they put off frock coats and stiff 
stocks, and put on loose shooting suits, big thick 
shoes, a loose soft handkerchief round their neck ; 
just as they pitch away the vile hard hat of city 
propriety that pinches, cramps, and cuts the hapless 
head, and replace it by the light yielding wide-awake ; 
do mentally pass through a like process of relief: 
their whole spiritual being is looser, freer, less tied up. 



of the Dwelling. 32 1 

Such changes as that from town to country must, I 
should think, be felt by all educated people, and 
make an appreciable difiference in the moral condi- 
tion of all educated people. Few men would feel 
the same amid the purple moors round Haworth, and 
amid the soft English scenery that you see from 
Richmond Hill. Some individuals, indeed, whose 
mind is not merely torpid, may carry the same 
animus with them wherever they go ; but their animi/s 
must be a very bad one. Mr. Scrooge, before his 
change of nature, was no doubt quite independent of 
external circumstances, and would no doubt have 
thought it proof of great weakness had he not been 
so. Nor was it a being of an amiable character in 
whose mouth Milton has put the words, ' No matter 
where, so / be still the same.' And even in his 
mouth the sentiment was rather vapouring than true. 
But a dull, heavy, prosaic, miserly, cantankerous, 
cynical, suspicious, bitter old rascal would probably 
be much the same anywhere. Such a man's nature 
is indurated against all the influences of scenery, as 
much as the granite rock against sunshine and 
showers. 

I dare say there are few people who do not uncon- 
sciously admit the principle of which so much has 
been said. Few people can look at a pretty tasteful 
villa, all gables, turrets, bay windows, twisted chim- 

Y 



322 TJie Moral Influences 

neys, verandahs, and balconies, set in a pleasant 
little expanse of shrubbery, with some fine forest- 
trees, a green bit of open lawn, and some winding 
walks through clumps of evergreens, without tacitly 
concluding that the people who live there must lead 
a very different life from that which is led in a dull 
smoky street, and a blackened, gardenless, grassless, 
treeless house in town ; very different even from the 
life of the people in the tasteless square stuccoed box, 
with a stiff gravel walk going up to its door, a few 
hundred yards off If you are having a day's sail in 
a steamer, along a pretty coast dotted with pleasant 
villages, you cannot repress some notion that the 
human beings whom you see loitering about there 
upon the rocks, in that pure air and genial idleness, 
are beings of a different order from those around you. 
You feel that to set foot on that pier, and to mingle 
with that throng, would carry you away a thousand 
miles in a moment ; and make you as different from 
what you are as though you had suddenly dropt from 
the sky into that quiet voluptuous valley of Typee, 
where Hermann Melville was so perfectly happy till 
he discovered that all the kindness of the natives was 
intended to make him the fatter and more palatable 
against that festival at which he was to be eaten. 
And no wonder that he felt comfortable, if that happy 
valley was indeed what he assures us it was : — 



of the Dwelling. 323 



There were no cares, griefs, troubles, or vexations, in 
all Typee. There were none of those thousand sources 
of irritation that the ingenuity of civilised man has created 
to mar his own felicity. There were no foreclosures of 
mortgages, no protested notes, no bills payable, no debts 
of honour, in Typee ; no unreasonable tailors or shoe- 
makers perversely bent on being paid, no duns of any 
description ; no assault and battery attorneys to foment 
discord, backing their clients up to a quarrel, and then 
knocking their heads together ; no poor relations everlast- 
ingly occupying the spare bedchamber, and diminishing 
the elbow-room at the family-table ; no destitute widows, 
with their children starving on the cold charities of the 
world ; no beggars, no debtors' prisons, no proud and 
hard-hearted nabobs in Typee ; or, to sum up all in one 
word — no Money ! That root of all evil was not to be 
found in the valley. 

In this secluded abode of happiness there were no cross 
old women, no cruel step-dames, no withered spinsters, 
no love-sick maidens, no sour old bachelors, no inatten- 
tive husbands, no melancholy young men, no blubbering 
youngsters, and no squalling brats. All was mirth, fun, 
and high good humour. 

It is pleasant to read such a description. It is like 
being carried suddenly from the Royal Exchange on 
a crow'ded afternoon, to a grassy, shady bank by the 
side of a country river. Probably most of us have 
travelled by railway through a wild country ; and 
when we stopped at some remote station among the 
hills, have wondered how the people there live, and 



324 The Moral In^tiences 

thought how different their Hfe must be from ours. 
Nor is it a mere fancy that takes possession of us 
when we look at the pretty Ehzabethan dwelhng, the 
thought of which carried us all the way to the South 
Pacific. If people are calm enough to be susceptible 
of external impressions, life really is very different 
there. I do not say it is necessarily happier ; but it 
is very different. Habit, indeed, equalises the prac- 
tical enjoyment of all lots, excepting only those of 
extreme suffering and degradation. Whatever level 
you get to in the scale of advantage, you soon get so 
accustomed to it that you do not mind much about 
it. When I used to study metaphysical philosophy, 
I remember that it appeared to me that this thought 
supplies by far the most serious of all objections to 
the doctrine (as taught by nature) of the Divine be- 
nevolence. It is a graver objection than the existence 
of positive evil. That may be conceived to be in some 
way inevitable ; but why should it be that to get a 
thing instantly diminishes its value to half? I can 
think of a reason why ; and a good reason too : but 
it is not drawn from the domain of philosophy. A 
poor fellow, toiling wearily along the dusty road, 
thinks how happy that man must be who is just now 
passing him, leaning back upon the cushions of that 
luxurious carriage, swept along by that pair of smok- 
ing thorough-breds. Of course the poor fellow is 



of the Dzvclling. 325 

mistaken. The man in the carriage is no happier 
than he. And, indeed, I can say conscientiously that 
the very saddest, most peevish, most irritable, and 
most discontented faces I have ever seen, I have seen 
looking out of extremely handsome carriage windows. 
Luxury destroys real enjoyment. There is more real 
enjoyment in riding in a wheelbarrow than in driving 
in a carriage and four. Who does not remember the 
keen relish of the rapid run in the wheelbarrow of 
early youth, bumping and rolling about, and finally 
turning a corner at full speed and upsetting? Who 
does not remember the delight of the little springless 
carriage that threatened to dislocate and grind down 
the bones ? But it is indeed much to be lamented, 
that merely to get near the possession of any coveted 
thing instantly changes the entire look of it : it may 
still appear very good and desirable : but the romance 
is gone. When Mr. John Campbell, Student of Theo- 
logy in St. Mary's College, St. Andrews, N.B., was 
working away at his Hebrew, or drilling the lads to 
whom he acted as tutor, and living sparingly on a few 
pounds a-year, he would no doubt have thought it a 
tremendous thing if he had been told that he would 
yet be a peer — that he would be, first Lord Chief- 
Justice and then Lord High Chancellor of England — 
and that he would, upon more than one great occa- 
sion, preside over the assembled aristocracy of Britain. 



326 TJic Moral Influences 

But as he got on step by step, the gradation took off 
the force of contrast : each successive step appeared 
natural enough, no doubt : and now, when he is fairly 
at the top of the tree, if that most amiable and able 
judge should ever wish to realise his elevation, I sup- 
pose he can do so only by recurring in thought to the 
links of St. Andrews, and to the days when he drilled 
his pupils in Latin and Greek. Student of divinity, 
newspaper reporter, utter barrister, King's Counsel, 
Solicitor-General, Member for Edinburgh, Attorney- 
General, Baron Campbell of St. Andrews, Chief-Justice 
of England, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain — each 
successive point was natural enough when won, 
though the end made a great change from the Manse 
of Cupar. And .when another Scotch clergyman's son, 
from a parish adjoining that of Lord Campbell's father, 
also went up to London about the same time,, a poor 
struggling artist, he and all his family would doubtless 
have thought it a grand elevation, had they been told 
that he was to become one of the most distinguished 
members of the Royal Academy. There is something 
intensely affecting in the letters which the minister of 
Cults (it was a very poor living) sent to his boy in 
London, saying that he could, by pinching, send him, 
if needful, four or five pounds. But before Sir David 
became the great man he grew, old Mr. Wilkie was in 
his grave : ' his son came to honour, and he knew it 



of tJic Divclling. 327 

not.' No doubt it was better as it was ; but if you or 
I, kindly reader, had had the ordering of things, the 
worthy man should have lived to see what would have 
gladdened his simple heart at last. 

Still, making every deduction for the levelling result 
of getting used to things, a great deal of the enjoyment 
of life, high or low, depends on the scenery amid which 
one dwells, and the house in which one lives — I mean 
the house regarded even in a merely aesthetic point of 
'view. It needs no argument to prove that if one's 
abode is subject to the grosser physical disadvantages 
of smoky chimneys, damp walls, neighbouring bogs, 
incurable draughts, rattling windows, unfitting doors, 
and the like, the result upon the temper and the views 
of the man thus afflicted will not be a pleasing one. 
A constant succession of little contemptible worries 
tends to foster a querulous, grumbling disposition, 
which renders a human being disagreeable to himself 
and intolerable to his friends. Real, great misfortunes 
and trials may serve to ennoble the character ; but 
ever-recurring petty annoyances prodiice a littleness 
and irritability of mind. And while great misfortune at 
once engages our sympathy, petty annoyances ill borne 
make the sufferer a laughing-stock. There is some- 
thing dignified in Napoleon smashed at Waterloo ; 
there is nothing fine about Napoleon at St. Helena, 
swearing at his ill-made soup, and cursing up and 



328 The Moral Lijiuences of t lie Dxvelling. 



down stairs at his insufficient allowance of clean shirts. 
But I am not now talking of abodes pressed by 
physical inconveniences. It is somewhat of a truism 
to say a man cannot be comfortable when he is uncom- 
fortable ; and that is the sum of what is to be said on 
that head. I mean now that one's home, aesthetically 
regarded, has much influence upon our enjoyment of 
life. It is a great matter towards making the best of 
this world, (and possibly, too, of the next,) that our 
dwelling shall be a pretty one, a pleasant one, and 
placed amid pleasant scenes. It is a constant plea- 
sure to live in such a home ; and it is a still greater 
pleasure to make it. I do not think I have ever seen 
happier people, or people who appeared more tho- 
roughly enviable, than people who have been building 
a pretty residence in the country. Of course they 
must be building it for themselves to have the full 
satisfaction of it ; also it must not be too large ; and 
finally, it must not be bigger nor grander than they 
can afford. The last-named point is essential. A 
duke inherits his castle — he did not build it ; and it is 
too large and splendid for the peculiar feeling which I 
am describing. It has its own peculiar charms : the 
charm of vastness of dwelling and domain ; the charm 
of hoary age and historic memories, and of connexion 
with departed ancestors, and of associations which the 
millions of the parvenu cannot buy. But it lacks the 




especial charm which Scott felt when he was building 
Abbotsford ; and which lesser men feel when sitting 
on a stone on a summer morning, and watching the 
walls going up, listening to the clinking of the chisel, 
planning out the few acres of ground, and idealising 
the life which is to be led there ; seeing with half-closed 
eyes that muddy wheel-cut expanse all green and trim ; 
and little Jamie running about the walk which will be 
there in after days ; and little Lucy diligently planting 
weeds in the corner where her garden will be. Here, 
surely, we think, the last days or years may peacefully 
go by ; and here may we, though somewhat scarred in 
the battle of life, and somewhat worn with its cares. 



330 TJic Moral Influences 

find a quiet haven at last. To me it is always pleasant 
reading when I fall in with books about planning and 
building such homes as these. At the mention of the 
Cottage, and even of the Villa, (though I don't like 
that latter word, it sounds vulgar and cockneyfied and 
affected ; but I fear we must accept it, for there is no 
other which conveys the idea of the modest yet elegant 
country-house for people of refinement, but not of great 
means,) there rises up before the mind's eye, as if by 
an enchanter's wand, a whole life of quiet enjoyment. 
Surely, life in the cottage or the country-house might 
be made a very pleasing, pure, and happy thing. In 
that unbreathed air, amid those beautiful scenes, sur- 
rounded by the gentle processes and teachings of 
nature, it is but that outward nature and human life 
should, on some fair summer-day, be wrought into a 
happy conformity ; and we should need no other 
heaven. Take the outward creation at her best, and for 
all the thorns and thistles of the Fall, j//^ would do yet ! 
I find a great pleasure in reading books of practical 
architecture : and I have lately found out one by an 
American architect, one Mr. Calvert Vaux, which 
carries one into fresh fields. It is a large handsome 
volume, luxurious in the size of its type, and admir- 
able for the excellence of its abundant illustrations. I 
have more to say of its contents by and by, and shall 
here say only, that to read such a book- with pleasure,. 



of the Dwelling. 331 

the reader must have some httle imagination and a 
good deal of sympathy, so as not to rest on mere 
architects' designs and builders' specifications, but to 
picture out and enter into the quiet life which these 
suggest. Everything depends upon that. Therein 
lies the salt of such a book. The enjoyment of all 
things beyond eating and drinking arises out of our 
idealising them. Do you think that a child who will 
spend an hour delightedly in galloping round the 
garden on his horse, which horse is a stick, regards 
that stick as the mere bit of wood % No : that stick 
is to him instinct with imaginings of a pony's patter- 
ing feet and shaggy mane, and erect little ears. It is 
not so long since the writer was accustomed to ride 
on horseback in that inexpensive fashion, but what he 
can remember all that the stick was ; and remember 
too how sometimes fancy would flag, the idealising 
power would break down, and from being a horse the 
stick became merely a stick, a dull, wearisome, stupid 
thing. And of what little things imagination, thus 
elevating and enchanting them, can make how much ! 
You remember the poor little solitary girl, in the 
wretched kitchen of Sally Brass, in the Old Curiosity 
Shop. Never was there life more bare of anything 
like enjoyment than the life which that poor creature 
led. Think, you folk who grumble at your lot, of a 
life whose features are sketched by such lines as a 



332 The Moral Influences 



dark cellar, utter solitude, black beetles, cold potatoes, 
cuffs, and kicks. Yet the idealising power could con- 
vey some faint tinge of enjoyment even into the cellar 
of House of Brass. The poor little thing, when she 
made the acquaintance of Mr. Richard Swiveller, in- 
quired of him had he ever tasted orange-peel wine. 
How was it made, he asked. The recipe was simple : 
take a tumbler of cold water, put a little bit of orange 
peel into it, and the beverage is ready for use. It has 
not much taste, added the little solitary, unless you 
viake believe very much. Sound and deep little philo- 
sopher ! We must apply the same prescription to life, 
and all by which life is surrounded. You are not to 
accept them as bare prosaic facts : you must make 
believe very much. Scott made believe very much 
at Abbotsford ; we all make believe very much at 
Christmas-time. Likewise at sight of the first snow- 
drop in springs after we have begun to grow old ; also 
when hawthorn blossoms and lilacs come again. And 
what a bare, cold, savourless life is sketched by the 
memorable lines which set before us the entire charac- 
ter of a man who could not make believe : — 

In vain, through every changing year 
Did nature lead him as before ; 

A primrose by a river's brim, 

A yellow primrose was to him, — 
And it was nothing more ! 
Let me recommend to the man with a taste for such 



of tJie Divelling. 333 

subjects, Mr. Sanderson's Rural Architecture, a neat 
little manual of a hundred pages, with a number of 
drawings and ground-plans of labourers' cottages, 
pretty little villas, village schools, and farm-steadings. 
And any reader may call it his upon payment of 
one shilling. To the man who has learnt to make 
believe, there will be more than a shilling's worth 
of enjoyment in the frontispiece, which is a plain but 
pretty Gothic cottage, surrounded with trees, a little 
retired from the road, which is reached through a neat 
rustic gateway, and with the spire of a village church 
two hundred yards off, peeping through trees and 
backed by quiet fields rising into hills of no more than 
English height. A footpath winds through the field 
towards the clump of wood in which stands the church. 
The book is a sensible and well-informed one. Its 
author tells us, but not till the seventieth page of his 
hundred, that he is ' simply desirous of having an 
agreeable half-hour's chat with the reader, who may 
take a fancy to indulge in the instructive pastime of 
building his own house, and who does not please to 
appear thoroughly ignorant of the matter he is about.' 
Mr. Sanderson appears from his book to have but 
a poor opinion of human nature. He is by no means 
a 'confidence-man.' The book is full of cautions as 
to the necessity of closely watching work-people lest 
they should cheat you, and do their work in a dis- 



334 The Moral hijlucnccs 

honest and insufficient manner. I lament to say that 
my own httle experience leads me to think that these 
cautions are by no means unnecessary. I do not 
think that builders and carpenters are as bad as horse- 
dealers, whose word no man in his senses should regard 
as the worth of a pin ; but it is extremely advisable to 
keep a sharp eye upon them while their work is pro- 
gressing. Work improperly done, or done with insuf- 
ficient materials, will certainly cause much expense 
and annoyance at a future day ; still, the constantly- 
recurring statements as to the likelihood of fraud, 
leave on one's mind an uncomfortable impression. 
Our race is not in a sound state. But perhaps it is 
too severe to judge that a decent-looking and well-to-do 
individual is a dishonest man, merely because he will 
at any time tell a lie to make a little money by it. 

There is a satisfaction in finding confirmation of 
one's own views in the writings of other men ; and so 
I quote with pleasure the following from Dr. South- 
wood Smith : — 

A clean, fresh, and well-ordered house exercises over its 
inmates a moral, no less than a physical influence, and 
has a direct tendency to make the members of the family 
sober, peaceable, and considerate of the feelings and 
happiness of each other ; nor is it difficult to trace a con- 
nexion between habitual feelings of this sort and the for- 
mation of habits of respect for property, for the laws in 
general, and even for those higher duties and obligations 



the observance of which no laws can enforce. Whereas, 
a filthy, squalid, unwholesome dwelling, in which none of 
the decencies common to society — even in the lowest stage 
of civilisation — are or can be observed, tends to make 
every dweller in such a hovel regardless of the feelings 
and happiness of each other, selfish, and sensual. And 
the connexion is obvious between the constant indulgence 
of appetites and passions of this class, and the formation 
of habits of idleness, dishonesty, debauchery, and violence. 

There is something very touching in a description 
in Household Words of the moral results of wretched 
dwellings, such as those in parts of Bethnal Green, in 
the eastern region of London. Misery and anxiety 
have here crushed energy out ; the people are honest, 
but they are palsied by despair : — 

The people of this district are not criminal, A lady 
might walk unharmed at midnight through their wretched 
lanes. Crime demands a certain degree of energy ; but 
if there were ever any harm in these well-disposed people, 
it has been tamed out of them by sheer want. They have 
been sinking for years. Ten years ago, or less, the men 
were politicians ; now, they have sunk below that stage 
of discontent. They are generally veiy still and hopeless ; 
cherishing each other ; tender not only towards their own 
kin, but towards their neighbours ; and they are subdued 
by sorrow to a manner strangely resembling the quiet and 
refined tone of the most polished circles. 

Very true to nature ! How well one can under- 
stand the state of mind of a poor man quite crushed 
and spiritrbroken : poisoned by ceaseless anxiety ; 



336 TJic Moral Influences 

with no heart to do anything ; many a time wishing 
that he might but creep into a quiet grave ; and 
meanwhile trying to shrink out of sight and sHp by 
unnoticed ! Despair nerves for a httle while, but 
constant care saps, and poisons, and palsies. Nor 
does it so in Bethnal Green alone, or only in dwell- 
ings which are undrained and unventilated, and which 
cannot exclude rain and cold. Elsewhere, as many 
of my readers have perhaps learned for themselves, it 
has shattered many a nervous system, unstrung many 
a once vigorous mind, crushed down many a once 
hopeful spirit, and aged many a man who should have 
been young by his years. 

I suppose it is now coming to be acknowledged by 
all men of sense, that it is a Christian duty to care for 
our fellow-creatures' bodies as well as for their souls : 
and that it is hateful cant and hypocrisy to pray for 
the removal of diseases which God by the revelations 
of Nature has taught us may be averted by the use 
of physical means, while these means have not been 
faithfully employed. When cholera or typhus comes, 
let us whitewash blackened walls, flush obstructed 
sewers, clear away intermural pigsties, abolish cess- 
pools, admit abundant air and light, and supply un- 
stinted water : — and having done all we can, let us 
then pray for God's blessing upon what we have done. 



of the Dwelling. 337 



and for His protection from the plague which by these 
means we are seeking to hold away from us. Prayers 
and pains must go together, alike in the physical and 
in the spiritual world. And I think it is now coming 
to be acknowledged by most rational beings, that 
houses ought to be pretty as well as healthy ; and that 
houses, even of the humblest class, may be pretty as 
well as healthy. By the Creator's wise arrangement, 
beauty and use go together ; the prettiest house will 
be the healthiest, the most convenient, and the most 
comfortable. And I am persuaded that great moral 
results follow from people's houses being pretty as 
well as healthy. Every one understands at once that 
a wretched hovel, dirty, ruinous, stifling, bug-infested, 
dunghill-surrounded, will destroy any latent love of 
neatness and orderliness in a poor man ; will destroy 
the love of home, that preservative against temptation 
which ranks next after religion in the heart, and send 
the poor man to the public-house, with all its ruinous 
temptations. But probably it is less remembered 
than it ought to be, that the home of poor man or 
well-to-do man ought to be pleasing and inviting, as 
well as healthy. If not, he will not and cannot have 
the feeling towards it that it is desirable he should 
have. And all this is not less to be sought after in 
the case of people who are so well off that though 
their home afford no gratification of taste, and even 
z 



3 3^ The Moral Influences 

lack the comfort which does not necessarily come 
with mere abundance, they are not likely to seek 
refuge at the alehouse, or to take to sottish or immoral 
courses of any kind. It makes an educated man do- 
mestic, it makes him a lover of neatness and accuracy, 
it makes him gentle and amiable, (I mean in all but 
very extreme cases,) to give him a pretty home. I 
wish it were generally understood that it does not of 
necessity cost a shilling more to build a pretty house 
of a certain size, than to build a hideous one yielding 
the like accommodation. Taste costs nothing. If 
you have a given quantity of building materials to 
arrange in order, it is just as easy and just as cheap 
to arrange them in a tasteful and graceful order and 
collocation, as in a tasteless, irritating, offensive, and 
disgusting one. Elaborate ornament, of course, costs 
dear : but it does not need elaborate ornament to 
make a pleasing house which every man of taste will 
feel enjoyment in looking at. Simple gracefulness is 
all that is essentially needful in cottage and villa archi- 
tecture. And in this aesthetic age, when there is a 
general demand for greater beauty in all physical ap- 
pliances ; when we are getting rid of the vile old 
willow-pattern ; when bedroom crockery must be of 
graceful form and embellishment ; when grates and 
fenders, chairs and couches, window-curtains and car- 
pets, oilcloth for lobby floors and paper for covering 



of tJic Divclling. * 339 



walls, must all be designed in conformity with the 
dictates of an elevated taste, it is not too much to 
hope that the day will come when every human dwell- 
ing that shall be built shall be so built and so placed 
that it shall form a picture pleasant to all men to look 
at. It is not necessary to say that this implies a con- 
siderable change from the state of matters at present 
existing in most districts of this country. And I trust 
it is equally unnecessary to say what school of domestic 
architecture must predominate if the day we wish for 
is ever to come. I trust that all my readers (except- 
ing of course the one impracticable man in each hun- 
dred, who always thinks differently from everybody 
else, and always thinks wrong) will agree with me in 
holding it as an axiom needing no argument to sup- 
port it, that every building which ranks under the 
class of villa or cottage, must, if intended to be taste- 
ful or pleasing, be built in some variety of that grand 
school which is commonly styled the Gothic. 

I know quite well that there are many persons in 
this world who would scout the idea that there is any 
necessity or any use for people who are not rich to 
make any provision for their ideal life, for their taste 
for the beautiful. I can picture to myself some utili- 
tarian old hunks, sharp-nosed, shrivelled-faced, with 
contracted brow, narrow intellect, and no feeling or 
taste at all, who would be ready (so far as he was 



340 The Moral Influences 

able) to ridicule my assertion that it is desirable and 
possible to provide something to gratify taste and to 
elevate and refine feeling, in the aspect and arrange- 
ment of even the humblest human dwellings. Beauty, 
some donkeys think, is the right and inheritance of 
the wealthy alone ; food to eat, clothes to wear, a 
roof to shelter from the weather, are all that working 
men should pretend to. And indeed, if the secret 
belief of such dull grovellers were told, it would be 
that all people with less than a good many hundreds 
a-year are stepping out of their sphere and encroach- 
ing on the demesne of their betters, when they aim 
at making their dwelling such that it shall please the 
cultivated eye as well as keep off wind and wet. 
Such mortals cannot understand or sympathise with 
the gratification arising from the contemplation of 
objects which are graceful and beautiful ; and they 
think that if there be such a gratification at all, it is 
a piece of impudence in a poor man to aim at it. It 
is, they consider, a luxury to which he has no right ; 
it is as though a ploughman should think to have 
champagne on his simple dinner-table. I verily be- 
lieve that there are numbers of wealthy men, espe- 
cially in the ranks of those who have made their own 
wealth, and who received little education in youth, 
who think that the supply of animal necessities is all 
that any mortal (but themselves, perhaps) can need. 



of tJic DzvcllUig. 341 



I have known of such a man, who said with amaze- 
ment of a youth whose health and Hfe premature care 
was sapping, ' He is well fed, and well dressed, and 
well lodged, and what the capital D more can the 
fellow want ?' Why, if he had been a horse or a pig, 
he would have wanted nothing more ; but the pos- 
session of a rational soul brings with it pressing wants 
which are not of a material nature, which are not to 
be supplied by material things, and which are not 
felt by pigs and horses. And the craving for sur- 
rounding objects of grace and beauty is one of these ; 
and it cannot be killed out but by many years of 
sordid money-making, or racking anxiety, or grinding 
want. The man whose whole being is given to find- 
ing food and raiment and sleep, is but a somewhat 
more intelligent horse. We have something besides 
a body, whose needs must be supplied ; or if not 
supplied, then crushed out, and we be brought thus 
nearer to the condition of being mere soulless bodies. 
Mr. Vaux has some just remarks on the importance 
of a pleasant home to the young. It is indeed a 
wretched thing when, whether from selfish heedless- 
ness or mistaken principle, the cravings of youthful 
imagination and feeling are systematically ignored, 
and life toned down to the last and most prosaic 
level. Says Mr. Vaux : — 

It is not for ourselves alone, but for the sake of our 



342 TJic Moral lajiucnccs of the Dwelling. 

children, that we should love to build our homes, whether 
they be villas, cottages, or log-houses, beautifully and well. 
The young people are mostly at home : it is their store- 
house for amusement, their opportunity for relaxation, 
their main resource ; and thus they are exposed to its in- 
fluence for good or evil unceasingly : their pliable, sus- 
ceptible minds take in its whole expression with the fullest 
possible force, and with unerring accuracy. It is only by 
degrees that the young hungry soul, born and bred in a 
hard, unlovely home, accepts the coarse fate to which not 
the poverty but the indiff"erence of its parents condemns 
it. It is many many years before the irrepressible longing 
becomes utterly hopeless : perhaps it is never crushed out 
entirely ; but it is so stupefied by slow degrees into de- 
spairing stagnation, if a perpetually-recurring blank sur- 
rounds it, that it often seems to die, and to make no sign; 
the meagre, joyless, torpid home-atmosphere in which it 
is forced to vegetate absolutely starves it out ; and thus 
the good intention that the all-wise Creator had in view, 
when instilling a desire for the beautiful into the life of the 
infant, is painfully frustrated. It is frequently from this 
cause, and from this alone, that an impulsive, high-spirited, 
light-hearted boy will dwindle by degrees into a sharp, 
shrewd, narrow-minded, and selfish youth ; from thence 
again into a prudent, hard, and horny manhood ; and at 
last into a covetous, unloving, and unloved old age. This 
single explanation is all-sufficient : he never had a pleasant 
home.* 

I tmst my readers will conclude from this brief 
specimen of Mr. Vaux's quality, that if he be as 

* Villas and Cottages, pp. 115, 116. 




SKETCHING. 



thoroughly up in the practice of pleasant rural archi- 
tecture as he is in the philosophy of it, he will be a 
very agreeable architect indeed. And, in truth, he 
is so, and his book is a very pleasant one. It is a 
handsome royal octavo volume of above three hundred 
pages ; it is prodigally illustrated with excellent wood- 
engravings, which shew the man who intends building 
a country-house an abundance of engaging examples 
from which to choose one. Nor are we shewn merely 



344 ^■^^<? Moral hijliicnces 

a number of taking views in perspective ; we have like- 
wise the ground-plan of each floor, shewing the size 
and height of each chamber; and, further, we are 
furnished with a careful calculation of the probable 
expense of each cottage or villa, Nor does Mr. 
Vaux's care extend only to the house proper : he 
shews some good designs for rustic gateways and 
fences, and some pretty plans for laying out and 
planting the piece of shrubbery and lawn which sur- 
rounds the abode. America, every one knows, is a 
country where a man must push if he wishes to get 
on ; he must not be held back by any false modesty ; 
and Mr. Vaux's book is not free from the suspicion of 
being a kind of advertisement of its author, who is 
described on the title-page as ' Calvert Vaux, archi- 
tect, late Downing and Vaux, of Newburgh, on the 
Hudson.' Then, on an otherwise blank page at the 
end of the volume, we find in large capitals the sig- 
nificant inscription, which renders it impossible for 
any one who reads the book to say that he does 
not know where to find Mr. Vaux when he wants 
him : — 

* Calvert Vaux, Architect, 

Appletoiis Building, 

348 Broadway.' 



of the Divclling. 345 

American architecture appears to stand in sad need 
of improvement. Mr. Vaux tells us, no doubt very 
truly, that ' ugly buildings are the almost invariable 
rule.' In that land of measureless forests there is a 
building material common, which is little used now in 
Britain — to wit, wood. Still, wood will furnish the 
material for very graceful and picturesque houses, even 
when in the rude form of logs ; and the true blight of 
housebuilding in America was less the poverty and the 
hurry of the early colonists, than their Puritan hatred 
and contempt of art, and of everything beautiful. 
Further, the democratic spirit could not tolerate the 
notion of anything being suffered to flourish which, as 
was wrongly thought, was to minister to the delight of 
only a select few. 

There is something amusing in reading the intro- 
ductory discourse upon the construction of countrj-- 
houses, with which Mr. Vaux's book sets out. It is 
odd to witness the trimming, we had almost said the 
sneaky fashion, in which your Yankee writes about 
' my country,' when he has anything to say in its 
dispraise. He dares not say what he thinks about 
America and its people. He must mingle a great 
deal of insincere compliment with anything in the 
nature of fault-finding. He writes in mortal terror of 
the blackguard portion of the press, and he never 
forgets the great principle, as laid down by Colonel 



346 TJie Moral Influences 

Chollop to Martin Chuzzlewit, that ' we air a great 
people, and we must be cracked up.' Mr. Vaux is 
manifestly of opinion, that Yankee bigotry, stupidity, 
dollar-worship, want of education, want of taste, and 
vulgar jealousy of people who are so well off as to be 
able to cultivate art, have prevented and are prevent- 
ing any great improvement in domestic or any other 
architecture. But whenever he has timidly ventured 
to hint as much, he instantly backs out with every 
appearance of trepidation, and hastens to make up for 
his delinquency by some extravagant eulogy of ' our 
people and our institutions.' It should seem that 
there is in America a cry for an original and purely 
American style of architecture ; some bold spirits ob- 
ject to the notion of being indebted to the Old World 
for anything whatsoever, and thus modestly does Mr. 
Vaux suggest to such that they are talking nonsense : — ■ 

Webster and Clay were orators of originality, but their 
words were all old. Their stock-in-trade is common pro- 
perty in the form of a dictionary, and the boundary lines 
over which neither ever ventured to pass are fairly set 
forth in a good grammar. Any desire on their part to 
invent a bran-new language would have been absurd, and 
any wish to produce a bran-new style of building is, with- 
out doubt, an equally senseless chimera. 

It is not, by the way, entirely true that the Yankees 
have been content to take the old words of England, 
and aim at originality only by the new arrangement of 




these hackneyed materials. They have really made 
some progress in the invention of a ' bran-new language,' 
but it may be doubted whether it is as good as the old. 
it appears that there are various respects in which 
American houses differ materially from those of Britain. 
A most uncomfortable and unpleasant arrangement is 
that dining-rooms are generally in the basement story ; 
that is, they are a sort of cellars underground, lighted 
solely by area windows. In town or country, but even 
more in the country, a more cheerless and disgusting 
plan could hardly be conceived. It comes of the 
essentially Yankee belief that a dining-room is merely 
a place of shelter into which people are to rush wildly, 
bolt huge blocks of food with breathless haste and in 
total silence, and then rush out again whenever the 
necessities of nature have been supplied. They have 
no notion over there of the social, genial, refined, and 
elevating 'Art of Dining.' And not knowing how to 
dine, of course they do not know how to provide a 
fitting scene for that civilised and civilising usage. 
Well says Mr. Vaux : — 

The fact is, that the art of eating and drinking wisely 
and well is so important to our social happiness, that it 
deserves to be developed under somewhat more favourable 
circumstances than is possible in a basement dining-room. 

Another peculiarity of the domestic architecture of 
the States is, that the houses must be very compact, 



348 The Moral Influences 

and the distances within the walls short, on account 
of the extreme badness, inefficiency, and insolence of 
the servants. Not servants, by the by ; they repu- 
diate any such title of subjection — they are 'helps.' 
Great pains must be taken to consult their feelings 
and lighten their work, otherwise they are likely to 
remind you of the fundamental principle of the Ame- 
rican constitution, that all men (except niggers) are 
equal (equal, of course, in stature, in strength, in 
speed, in talent, in education, in good luck, in dollars) ; 
and so to walk off and leave you to do your house-work 
for yourself Then it appears that various appliances 
essential to comfort, which in England are found in 
the residence of the poorest gentleman, are in America 
comparatively rare. They would probably cause a man 
to be suspected of aristocratic tendencies, and lead to 
his being scarified in the Netv York Key-hole Listener, 
or the Netv York Daily Stabler. In what country but 
America would it have been regarded as a noble 
spectacle, when the President lately, on reaching a 
hotel at the end of a journey, declined to wash in a 
private bed-room, and insisted on taking his turn at a 
spout in the hall, and his share of the common soap 
and the grimy towel % Would not the disgusting clap- 
trap have anywhere else met the contempt which it 
richly deserved ? Again, a peculiar influence is exerted 
on architecture and architects by the fact that when a 



of the Dwelling. 349 



spry Yankee wishes to build a house, he very generally 
thinks to overreach his architect and builder by i)re- 
tending that he wants much less accommodation than 
he is resolved to have ; thinking that, the contract once 
made, and begun to be executed, he will be able to 
squeeze more work out for the same price. It is grati- 
fying to know that in such cases he usually meets his 
match, and has to pay smartly ; and then for the 
remainder of his life he goes about grumbling that 
architects' plans cost much more money to execute 
than their employers are led in the first instance to 
believe will be necessary. How lamentable that the 
exercise of a noble art should ever be degraded into 
a conflict between a couple of rogues, each trying to 
outwit the other ! 

American houses are for the most part square boxes, 
with no character at all. They are generally painted 
white, with bright green blinds : the effect is staring 
and ugly. In America, a perfectly straight line is 
esteemed the line of beauty, and a cube the most 
graceful of forms. Two large gridirons, laid across 
one another, exhibit the ground-plan of the large 
towns. Two smaller gridirons represent the villages. 
Mr. Vaux is strong for the use of graceful curves, and 
for laying out roads with some regard to the formation 
of the ground, and the natural features of interest. 
But a man of taste must meet many mortifications in 



a country where the following barbarity could be per- 
petrated : — 

In a case that recently occurred near a country town at 
some distance from New York, a road was run through a 
very beautiful estate, one agreeable feature of which was 
a pretty though small pond, that, even in the dryest sea- 
sons., was always full of water, and would have formed an 
agreeable adjunct to a country-seat. A single straight 
pencil line on the plan doubtless marked out the direction 
of the road : and as this line happened to go straight 
through the pond, straight through the pond was the road 
accordingly carried, the owner of the estate personally 
superintending the operation, and thus spoiling his sheet 
of water, diminishing the value of his lands, and incurring 
expense by the cost of filling-in, without any advantage 
whatever ; for a winding road so laid out as to skirt the 
pond would have been far more attractive and agreeable 
than the harsh, straight line that is now scored like a 
railway track clear through the undulating surface of the 
property ; and such barbarisms are of constant occur- 
rence. 

No doubt they are, and they are of frequent re- 
currence nearer home. I have known places where, 
if you are anxious to get a body of men to make any 
improvement upon a church or school-house, it is 
necessary that you should support your plan solely by 
considerations of utility. Even to suggest the increase 
of beauty which would result would be quite certain 
to knock the entire scheme on the head. 



of tlic Dwelling. 351 

Some features of American house-building follow 
from the country and climate. Such are the veran- 
dahs, and the hooded windows which form part of the 
design of every villa and every cottage represented in 
Mr. Vaux's book. The climate makes these desirable, 
and even essential. Such, too, is the abundance of 
houses built of wood, several designs for such houses 
being of considerable pretension. And only a hurried 
and hasty people, with little notion of building for 
posterity, would accept the statement, that in building 
with brick, eight inches thick are quite enough for 
the walls of any country-house, however large. The 
very slightest brick walls run up in England are, I be- 
lieve, at least twelve inches thick. The materials for 
roofing are very different from those to which we are 
accustomed. Slates are little used, having to be 
brought from England ; tin is not uncommon. Thick 
canvas is thought to make a good roof when the sur- 
face is not great ; zinc is a good deal employed ; but 
the favourite roofing material is shingle, which makes 
a roof pleasing to American eyes. 

It is agreeably varied in surface, and assumes by age a 
soft, pleasant, neutral tint that harmonises with any colour 
that may be used in the building. 

I am not much captivated by Mr. Vaux's descrip- 
tion of the representative American drawing-room, 
which, it appears, is entitled the best parlour : — 



352 TJic Moral Influences 

The walls are hard-finished white, the woodwork is 
white, and a white marble mantelpiece is fitted over a fire- 
place which is never used. The floor is covered with a 
carpet of excellent quality, and of a large and decidedly 
sprawling pattern, made up of scrolls and flowers in gay 
and vivid colours. A round table with a cloth on it, and 
a thin layer of books in smart bindings, occupies the 
centre of the room, and furnishes about accommodation 
enough for one rather small person to sit and write a note 
at. A gilt mirror finds a place between the windows. A 
sofa occupies irrevocably a well-defined space against the 
wall, but it is just too short to lie down on, and too high 
and slippery with its spring convex seat to sit on with any 
comfort. It is also cleverly managed that points or knobs 
(of course ornamental and French-polished) shall occur 
at all those places towards which a wearied head would 
naturally tend, if leaning back to snatch a few moments' 
repose from fatigue. There is also a row of black walnut 
chairs, with horse-hair seats, all ranged against the 
white wall. A console-table, too, under the mirror, with 
a white marble top and thin gilt brackets. I think there 
is a piano. There is certainly a triangular stand for 
knick-knacks, china, &c., and this, with some chimney 
ornaments, completes the furniture, which is all arranged 
according to stiff, immutable law. The windows and 
Venetian blinds are tightly closed, the door is tightly 
shut, and the best room is in consequence always ready — - 
for what ? For daily use .'' Oh, no ; it is in every way 
too good for that. For weekly use ? Not even for that ; 
but for company use. And thus the choice room, with 
the pretty view, is sacrificed to keep up a conventional 
show of finery which pleases no one, and is a great, though 
unacknowledged, bore to the proprietors. 



of the Dwelling. 353 



I am not sure that we in this country have much 
right to laugh at the folly which maintains such chilly 
and comfortless apartments. Even so uninhabited 
and useless is many a drawing-room which I could 
name on this side of the Atlantic. What an embodi- 
ment of all that is stiff, repellent, and uneasy, are 
the drawing-rooms of most widow ladies of limited 
means ! My space does not permit another extract 
from Mr. Vaux, in which he explains his ideal of the 
way in which a cottage parlour should be arranged 
and furnished. Very pleasantly he sketches an un- 
pretending picture, in which snugness and elegance, 
the utile and the duke, are happily and inexpensively 
combined. But even here Mr. Vaux feels himself 
pulled up by a vision of a hard-headed and close- 
fisted old Yankee, listening with indignation, and 
bursting out with ' This will never do ! ' 

I may remark, in passing, that Mr. Vaux has no 
earthly idea of the way to build a church. He says, 
no doubt with truth, that nothing can be more revolt- 
ing to any man of taste than the meeting-houses which 
are found throughout the States, which are generally 
in the shape of ' a wooden caricature of a Grecian 
temple.' He insists, very justly, that the house of 
God ought to be ' the purest, the noblest, and the best 
architectural work our minds can conceive and our 
hands execute.' And then he gives a view of a design 

A A 



354 ^■^^ Moral Influences 

for a church which strikes me as being the ughest and 
most mimeaning I have seen for a long time. I can 
say honestly that, after the deepest meditation, I can- 
not for my life guess whether Mr. Vaux intends his 
church to be Gothic or Grecian. The truth is, Mr. 
Vaux knows no more how to design a church than I 
do how to find the longitude. It is impossible that 
any man in the United States should know how to 
build a church, for no man who has lived there all his 
life has ever seen a decent church. In America, un- 
happily, there is no National Church, and accordingly 
the means are lacking which should cover the land 
with solemn and beautiful ecclesiastical buildings, 
whose existence should be a spur even to the erectors 
of dissenting meeting-houses to struggle at some cheap 
imitation of them. And do you think that a thrifty 
republican would give his dollars to build York Min- 
ster or Canterbury Cathedral ! No ; he would flare 
up at such monstrous waste, as Judas grumbled at the 
waste of the ointment. 

We talk about houses, my friend; we look at houses; 
but how little the stranger knows of what they are ! 
Search from cellar to garret some old country-house, 
in which successive generations of boys and girls have 
grown up, but be sure that the least part of it is that 
which you can see, and not the most accurate inven- 



of tJic Divclliiig. 355 



tory that ever was drawn up by appraiser will include 
half its belongings. There are old memories crowding 
about every corner of that home unknown to us : and 
to minds and hearts far away in India and Australia 
everything about it is sublimed, saddened, transfigured 
into something different from what it is to you and 
me. You know for yourself, my reader, whether 
there be not something not present elsewhere about 
the window where you sat when a child and learned 
your lessons, the table once surrounded by many 
merry young faces which will not surround it again 
in this world, the fireside where your father sat, the 
chamber where your sister died. Very little indeed 
can sense do towards shewing us the Home, or 
towards shewing us any scene which has been asso- 
ciated with human life and feeling, and embalmed in 
human memories. The same few hundred yards along 
the sea-shore, which are nothing to one man but so 
much ribbed sea-sand and so much murmuring water, 
may be to another something to quicken the heart's 
beating and bring the blood to the cheek. The same 
green path through the spring-clad trees, with the 
primroses growing beneath them, which lives in one's 
memory year after year with its fresh vividness un- 
diminished, may be in another merely a vague recol- 
lection, recalled with difficulty or not at all. 



356 The Moral Influences of the Divellhig. 



Each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe, 
Our hermit spirits dwell and range apart ; 

Our eyes see all around in gloom or glow, 

Hues of their own, fresh borrow'd from the heart. 





CHURCHYARD. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CONCERNING HURRY AND LEISURE. 

OH what a blessing it is to have time to breathe, 
and think, and look around one ! I mean, of 
course, that all this is a blessing to the man who has 
been overdriven : who has been living for many days 



358 HiD'ry and L cis?ire. 

in a breathless hurry, pushing and driving on, trying 
to get through his work, yet never seeing the end of 
it, not knowing to what task he ought to turn first, so 
many are pressing upon him all together. Some folk, I 
am informed, like to live in a fever of excitement, and 
in a ceaseless crowd of occupations : but such folk 
form the minority of the race. Mosc human beings 
will agree in the assertion that it is a horrible feeling 
to be in a hurry. It wastes the tissues of the body ; 
it fevers the fine mechanism of the brain ; it renders 
it impossible for one to enjoy the scenes of nature. 
Trees, fields, sunsets, rivers, breezes, and the like, 
must all be enjoyed at leisure, if enjoyed at all. There 
is not the slightest use in a man's paying a hurried 
visit to the country. He may as well go there blind- 
fold, as go in a hurry. He will never see the country. 
He will have a perception, no doubt, of hedgerows 
and grass, of green lanes and silent cottages, perhaps 
of great hills and rocks, of various items which go 
towards making the country ; but the country itself 
he will never see. That feverish atmosphere which he 
carries with him will distort and transform even indi- 
vidual objects ; but it will utterly exclude the view of 
the whole. A circling London fog could not do so 
more completely. For quiet is the great characteristic 
and the great charm of country scenes j and you can- 
not see or feel quiet when you are not quiet yourself 



Hurry and Leisure. 359 

A man flying through this peaceful valley in an express 
train at the rate of fifty miles an hour might just as 
reasonably fancy that to us, its inhabitants, the trees 
and hedges seem always dancing, rushing, and circling 
about, as they seem to him in looking from the window 
of the flying carriage ; as imagine that, when he comes 
for a day or two's visit, he sees these landscapes as 
they are in themselves, and as they look to their ordi- 
nary inhabitants. The quick pulse of London keeps 
with him : he cannot, for a long time, feel sensibly an 
influence so little startling, as faintly flavoured, as that 
of our simple country life. We have all beheld some 
country scenes, pleasing but not very striking, while 
driving hastily to catch a train for which we feared we 
should be too late ; and afterwards, when we came to 
know them well, how different they looked ! 

I have been in a hurry. I have been tremendously 
busy. I have got through an amazing amount of 
work in the last few weeks, as I ascertain by looking 
over the recent pages of my diary. You can never 
be sure whether you have been working hard or not, 
except by consulting your diary. Sometimes you 
have an oppressed and worn-out feeling of having 
been overdriven, of having done a vast deal during 
many days past ; when lo ! you turn to the uncom- 
promising record, you test the accuracy of your feel- 
ing by that unimpeachable standard ; and you find 



360 Hurry and Lets lire. 

that, after all, you have accomplished very little. 
The discovery is mortifying, but it does you good ; 
and besides other results, it enables you to see how 
very idle and useless people, who keep no diary, 
may easily bring themselves to believe that they are 
among the hardest-wrought of mortals. They know 
they feel weary ; they know they have been in a 
bustle and worry ; they think they have been in it 
much longer than is the fact. For it is curious how 
readily we believe that any strongly-felt state of mind 
or outward condition — strongly felt at the present 
moment — has been lasting for a very long time. You 
have been in very low spirits : you fancy now that 
you have been so for a great portion of your life, 
or at any rate for weeks past : you turn to your 
diary, — why, eight-and-forty hours ago you were as 
merry as a cricket during the pleasant drive with 
Smith, or the cheerful evening that you spent with 
Snarling. I can well imagine that when some heavy 
misfortune befalls a man, he soon begins to feel as if 
it had befallen him a long, long time ago : he can 
hardly remember days which were not darkened by 
it : it seems to have been the condition of his being 
almost since his birth. And so, if you have been, 
toiling very hard for three days — your pen in your 
hand almost from morning to night perhaps — rely 
upon it that at the end of those days, save for the 



Hurry and Leisure. 361 

uncompromising diary that keeps you right, you would 
have in your mind a general impression that you had 
been labouring desperately for a very long period — 
for many days, for several weeks, for a month or two. 
After heavy rain has fallen for four or five days, all 
persons who do not keep diaries invariably think that 
it has rained for a fortnight. If keen frost lasts in 
winter for a fortnight, all persons without diaries have 
a vague belief that there has been frost for a month 
or six weeks. You resolve to read Mr. Wordy's valu- 
able History of the Entire Human Race throughout the 
whole of Time (I take for granted you are a young 
person) : you go at it every evening for a week. At 
the end of that period you have a vague uneasy 
impression, that you have been soaked in a sea of 
platitudes, or weighed down by an incubus of words, 
for about a hundred years. For even such is life. 

Every human being, then, who is desirous of know- 
ing for certain whether he is doing much work or 
little, ought to preserve a record of what he does. 
And such a record, I believe, will in most cases serve 
to humble him who keeps it, and to spur on to more 
and harder work. It will seldom flatter vanity, or 
encourage a tendency to rest on the oars, as though 
enough had been done. You must have laboured 
very hard and very constantly indeed, if it looks 
much in black and white. And how much work 



362 Hurry and Leisure. 

may be expressed by a very few words in the diary ! 
Think of'Ehhu Burrit's 'forged fourteen hours, then 
Hebrew Bible three hours.' Think of Sir Walter's 
short memorial of his eight pages before breakfast, — 
and what large and closely-written pages they were ! 
And how much stretch of such minds as they have 
got — how many quick and laborious processes of the 
mental machinery — are briefly embalmed in the diaries 
of humbler and smaller men, in such entries as, 
'After breakfast, walk in garden with children for 
ten minutes; then Sermon on 10 pp.; working hard 
from ten till one p.m. ; then left off with bad headache, 
and very weary?' The truth is, you can't represent 
work by any record of it. As yet, there is no way 
known of photographing the mind's exertion, and 
thus preserving an accurate memorial of it. You 
might as well expect to find in such a general phrase 
as a stormy sea the delineation of the countless shapes 
and transformations of the waves throughout several 
hours in several miles of ocean, as think to see in Sir 
Walter Scott's eight pages before breakfast an adequate 
representation of the hard, varied, wearing-out work 
that went to turn them off. And so it is, that the 
diary which records the work of a very hard-wrought 
man, may very likely appear to careless, unsympathis- 
ing readers, to express not such a very laborious life 
after all. Who has not felt this, in reading the 



Hurry and Leisure. 363 

biography of that amiable, able, indefatigable, and 
overwrought man, Dr. Kitto % He worked himself to 
death by labour at his desk : but only the reader who 
has learned by personal experience to feel for him, is 
likely to see how he did it. 

But besides such reasons as these, there are strong 
arguments why every man should keep a diary. I 
cannot imagine how many reflective men do not. 
How narrow and small a thing their actual life must 
be ! They live merely in the present ; and the 
present is only a shifting point, a constantly-pro- 
gressing mathematical line, which parts the future 
from the past. If a man keeps no diary, the j^ath 
crumbles away behind him as his feet leave it ; and 
days gone by are little more than a blank, broken by 
a few distorted shadows. His life is all confined 
within the limits of to-day. Who does not know how 
imperfect a thing memory is % It not merely forgets ; 
it misleads. Things in memory do not merely fade 
away, preserving as they fade their own lineaments so 
long as they can be seen : they change their aspect, 
they change their place, they turn to something quite 
different from the fact. In the picture of the past, 
which memory unaided by any written record sets 
before us, the perspective is entirely wrong. How 
capriciously some events seem quite recent, which 
the diary shows are really far away ; and how unac- 



364 Hurry and Leisure. 

countably many things look far away, which in truth 
are not left many weeks behind us ! A man might 
almost as well not have lived at all as entirely forget 
that he has lived, and entirely forget what he did on 
those departed days. But I think that almost every 
person would feel a great interest in looking back, 
day by day, upon what he did and thought upon that 
day twelvemonths, that day three or five years. The 
trouble of writing the diary is very small. A few lines, 
a few words, written at the time, suffice, when you 
look at them, to bring all (what Yankees call) the 
surroundings of that season before you. Many little 
things come up again, which you know quite well 
you never would have thought of again but for your 
glance at those words, and still which you feel you 
would be sorry to have forgotten. There must be a 
richness about the life of a person who keeps a diary, 
unknown to other men. And a million more little 
links and ties must bind him to the members of his 
family circle, and to all among whom he lives. Life, 
to him, looking back, is not a bare line, stringing to- 
gether his personal identity ; it is surrounded, inter- 
twined, entangled, with thousands and thousands of 
slight incidents, which give it beauty, kindliness, reality. 
Some folk's life is like an oak walking-stick, straight 
and varnished ; useful, but hard and bare. Other men's 
life (and such may yours and mine, kindly reader, ever 



Hurry and Leisure. 365 

be) is like that oak when it was not a stick but a branch, 
and waved, leaf-enveloped, and with lots of little twigs 
growing out of it, upon the summer tree. And yet 
more precious than the power of the diary to call up 
again a host of little circumstances and facts, is its 
power to bring back the indescribable but keenly-felt 
atmosphere of those departed days. The old time 
comes over you. It is not merely a collection, an 
aggregate of facts, that comes back ; it is something 
far more excellent than that : it is the soul of days long 
ago ; it is the dear aiild lang syne itself ! The perfume 
of hawthorn-hedges faded is there ; the breath of 
breezes that fanned our gray hair when it made sunny 
curls, often smoothed down by hands that are gone ; 
the sunshine on the grass where these old fingers made 
daisy chains ; and snatches of music, compared with 
vvhich anything you hear at the Opera is extremely 
poor. Therefore keep your diary, my friend. Begin 
at ten years old, if you have not yet attained that age. 
It will be a curious link between the altered seasons 
of your life ; there will be something very touching 
about even the changes which will pass upon your 
handwriting. You will look back at it occasionally, 
and shed several tears of which you have not the least 
reason to be ashamed. No doubt when you look back, 
you will find many very silly things in it ; Avell, you did 
not think them silly at the time ; and possibly you may 



"^66 Hurry and Leisure. 

be humbler, wiser, and more sympathetic, for the fact 
that your diary will convince you (if you are a sensible 
person now) that probably you yourself, a few years 
or a great many years since, were the greatest fool 
you ever knew. Possibly at some future time you 
may look back with similar feelings on your present 
self : so you will see tliat it is very fit that mean- 
while you should avoid self-confidence and cultivate 
humility; that you should not be bumptious in any 
way ; and that you should bear, with great patience 
and kindliness, the follies of the young. Therefore, 
my reader, write up your diary daily. You may do 
so at either of two times : ist, After breakfast, when- 
ever you sit down to your work, and before you begin 
your work : 2nd, After you have done your indoors 
work, which ought not to be later than two p.m., and 
before you go out to your external duties. Some good 
men, as Dr. Arnold, have in addition to this brought 
up their history to the present period before retiring 
for the night. This is a good plan ; it preserves the 
record of the day as it appears to us in two different 
moods : the record is therefore more likely to be a 
true one, uncoloured by any temporary mental state. 
Write down briefly what you have been doing. Never 
mind that the events are very little. Of course they 
must be ; but you remember what Pope said of 
little things. State what work you did. Record the 



Hurry and Leisure. 367 

progress of matters in the garden. Mention where 
you took your walk, or ride, or drive. State anything 
particular concerning the .horses, cows, dogs, and 
pigs. Preserve some memorial of the progress of the 
children. Relate the occasions on which you made a 
kite or a water-wheel for any of them ; also the stories 
you told them, and the hymns you heard them repeat. 
You may preserve some mention of their more remark- 
able and old-fashioned sayings. Forsitan d oliin 
JuBC mcminissc juvabit : all these things may bring 
back more plainly a little life when it has ceased ; 
and set before you a rosy little face and a curly little 
head when they have mouldered into clay. Or if you 
go, as you would rather have it, before them, why, 
when one of your boys is Archbishop of Canterbury 
and the other Lord Chancellor, they may turn over 
the faded leaves, and be the better for reading those 
early records, and not impossibly think some kindly 
thoughts of their governor who is far away. Record 
when the first snow-drop came, and the earliest prim- 
rose. Of course you will mention the books you read, 
and those (if any) which you write. Preserve some 
memorial, in short, of everything that interests you 
and yours ; and look back each day, after you have 
written the few lines of your little chronicle, to see 
what you were about that day the preceding year. 
No one who in this simple spirit keeps a diary, can 



368 H7irry and Leisure. 

possibly be a bad, unfeeling, or cruel man. No scape- 
grace or blackguard could keep a diary such as that 
which has been described. I am not forgetting that 
various blackguards, and extremely dirty ones, have 
kept diaries ; but they have been diaries to match 
their own character. Even in reading Byron's diary, 
you can see that he was not so much a very bad 
fellow as a very silly fellow, who thought it a grand 
thing to be esteemed very bad. When, by the way, 
will the day come when young men will cease to 
regard it as the perfection of youthful humanity to be 
a reckless, swaggering fellow, who never knows how 
much money he has or spends, who darkly hints that 
he has done many wicked things which he never did, 
who makes it a boast that he never reads anything, 
and thus who affects to be even a more ignorant 
numskull than he actually is % When will young men 
cease to be ashamed of doing right, and to boast of 
doing wrong (which they never did) % ' Thank God,' 
said poor Milksop to me the other day, 'although I 
have done a great many bad things, I never did, &c. 
&c. &c.' The silly fellow fancied that I should think 
a vast deal of one who had gone through so much, 
and sown such a large crop of wild oats. I looked at 
him with much pity. Ah ! thought I to myself, there 
are fellows who actually do the things you absurdly 
pretend to have done ; but if you had been one of 




those, I should not have shaken hands with you five 
minutes since. With great difficulty did I refrain 
from patting his empty head, and saying, ' Oh, poor 
Milksop, you are a tremendous fool !' 

It is indeed to be admitted that by keeping a diary 
you are providing what is quite sure in days to come 
to be an occasional cause of sadness. Probably it 
will never conduce to cheerfulness to look back over 
those leaves. Well, you will be much the better for 
being sad occasionally. There are other things in 
this life than to put things in a ludicrous light, and 
laugh at them. That^ too, is excellent in its time and 
place : but even Douglas Jerrold sickened of the 



370 Hurry and Leisure. 

forced fun of Punch, and thought this world had 
better ends than jesting. Don't let your diary fall 
behind : write it up day by day : or you will shrink 
from going back to it and continuing it, as Sir Walter 
Scott tells us he did. You will feel a double unhap- 
piness in thinking you are neglecting something you 
ought to do, and in knowing that to repair your 
omission demands an exertion attended with especial 
pain and sorrow. Avoid at all events that discomfort 
of diary-keeping, by scrupulous regularity : there are 
others which you cannot avoid, if you keep a diary at 
all, and occasionally look back upon it. It must tend 
to make thoughtful people sad, to be reminded of 
things concerning which we feel that we cannot think 
of them ; that they have gone wrong, and cannot now 
be set right ; that the evil is irremediable, and must 
just remain, and fret and worry whenever thought of ; 
and life go on under that condition. It is like making 
up one's mind to live on under some incurable disease, 
not to be alleviated, not to be remedied, only if pos- 
sible to be forgotten. Ordinary people have all some 
of these things : tangles in their life and affairs that 
cannot be unravelled and must be left alone : sorrow- 
ful things which they think cannot be helped. I think 
it highly inexpedient to give way to such a feeling ; 
it ought to be resisted as far as it possibly can. The 
very worst thing that you can do with a skeleton is to 



Hurry and Leisure. 371 

lock the closet door upon it, and try to think no 
more of it. No : open the door : let in air and light : 
bring the skeleton out, and sort it manfully up : per- 
haps it may prove to be only the skeleton of a cat, or 
even no skeleton at all. There is many a house, and 
many a family, in which there is a skeleton, which is 
made the distressing nightmare it is, mainly by trying 
to ignore it. There is some fretting disagreement, 
some painful estrangement, made a thousand times 
worse by ill-judged endeavours to go on just as if it 
were not there. If you wish to get rid of it, you must 
recognise its existence, and treat it with frankness, 
and seek manfully to set it right. It is wonderful 
how {q\n evils are remediless, if you fairly face them, 
and honestly try to remove them. Therefore, I say it 
earnestly, don't lock your skeleton-chamber door. If 
the skeleton be there, I defy you to forget that it is. 
And even if it could bring you present quiet, it is no 
healthful draught, the water of Lethe. Drugged rest 
is unrefreshful, and has painful dreams. And further; 
don't let your diary turn to a small skeleton, as it is 
sure to do if it has fallen much into arrear. There 
will be a peculiar soreness in thinking that it is in 
arrear ; yet you will shrink painfully from the idea of 
taking to it again and bringing it up. Better to begin 
a fresh volume. There is one thing to be especially 
avoided. Do not on any account, upon some even- 



172 Hurry and Leisure. 



ing when you are pensive, downhearted, and alone, go 
to the old volumes, and turn over the yellow pages 
with their faded ink. Never recur to volumes telling 
the story of years long ago, except at very cheerful 
times, in very hopeful moods : — unless, indeed, you 
desire to feel, as did Sir Walter, the connexion be- 
tween the clauses of the scriptural statement, that 
Ahithophel set his house in order, and hanged himself. 
In that setting in order, what old, buried associations 
rise up again : what sudden pangs shoot through the 
heart, what a weight comes down upon it, as we open 
drawers long locked, and come upon the relics of our 
early selves, and schemes and hopes ! Well, your 
old diary, of even five or ten years since, (especially if 
you have as yet hardly reached middle age,) is like a 
repertory in which the essence of all sad things is pre- 
served. Bad as is the drawer or the shelf which holds 
the letters sent you from home when you were a 
schoolboy ; sharp as is the sight of that lock of hair of 
your brother, whose grave is baked by the suns of Hin- 
dostan ; riling (not to say more) as is the view of that 
faded ribbon or those withered flowers whicli you still 
keep, though Jessie has long since married Mr. Beest, 
who has ten thousand a-year : they are not so bad, so 
sharp, so riling, as is the old diary, wherein the spirit 
of many disappointments, toils, partings, and cares, is 
distilled and preserved. So don't look too frequently 



Hurry and Leisure. 373 



into your old diaries, or they will make you glum. 
Don't let them be your usual reading. It is a poor 
use of the past, to let its remembrances unfit you for 
the duties of the present. 

I have been in a hurry, I have said ; but I am not 
so now. Probably the intelligent reader of the pre- 
ceding pages may surmise as much. I am enjoying 
three days of delightful leisure. I did nothing 
yesterday : I am doing nothing to-day : I shall do 
nothing to-morrow. This is June : let me feel that it 
is so. When in a hurry, you do not realise that a 
month, more especially a summer month, has come, 
till it is gone. June : let it be repeated : the leafy 
month of June ^ to use the strong expression of Mr. 
Coleridge. Let me hear you immediately quote tlie 
verse, my young lady reader, in which that expression 
is tcr be found. Of course you can repeat it. It is 
now very warm, and beautifully bright. I am sitting 
on a velvety lawn, a hundred yards from the door of 
a considerable country-house, not my personal pro- 
perty. Under the shadow of a large sycamore is this 
iron chair ; and this little table, on which the paper 
looks quite green from the reflection of the leaves. 
There is a very little breeze. Just a foot from my 
hand, a twig with very large leaves is moving slowly 
and gently to and fro. There, the great serrated 
leaf has brushed the pen. The sunshine is sleeping 



374 Hurry and Leisure. 

(the word is not an affected one, but simply exj^resses 
the phenomenon) upon the bright green grass, and 
upon the dense masses of fohage which are a little 
way off on every side. Away on the left, there is a 
well-grown horse-chestnut tree, blazing with blossoms. 
In the little recesses where the turf makes bays of 
verdure going into the thicket, the grass is nearly as 
white with daisies as if it were covered with snow, or 
had several table-cloths spread out upon it to dry. 
Blue and green, I am given to understand, form an 
incongruous combination in female dress ; but hew 
beautiful the little patches of sapphire sky, seen 
through the green leaves ! Keats was quite right ', 
any one who is really fond of nature must be very far 
gone indeed, when he or she, like poor Isabella with 
her pot of basil, 'forgets the blue above the trees.' 
I am specially noticing a whole host of little appear- 
ances and relations among the natural objects within 
view, which no man in a hurry would ever observe ; 
yet which are certainly meant to be observed, and 
worth observing. I don't mean to say that a beauti- 
ful thing in nature is lost because no human being 
sees it ; I have not so vain an idea of the importance 
of our race. I do not think that that blue sky, with 
its beautiful fleecy clouds, was spread out there just 
as a scene at a theatre is spread out, simply to be 
looked at by us ; and that the intention of its Maker 



Hurry and Leisure. 375 

is balked if it be not. Still, among a host of other 
uses, which we do not know, it cannot be questioned 
that one end of the scenes of nature, and of the 
capacity of noting and enjoying them which is im- 
planted in our being, is, that they should be noted 
and enjoyed by human minds and hearts. It is now 
11.30 A.M., and I have notliing to do that need take 
me far from this spot till dinner, which will be just 
seven hours hereafter. It requires an uninterrupted 
view of at least four or five hours ahead, to give the 
true sense of leisure. If you know you have some 
particular engagement in two hours, or even three or 
four, the feeling you have is not that of leisure. On 
the contrary, you feel that you must push on vigor- 
ously with whatever you may be about ; there is no 
time to sit down and muse. Two hours are a very 
short time. It is to be admitted that much less than 
half of that period is very long, when you are listening 
to a sermon ; and the man who wishes his life to 
appear as long as possible can never more effectually 
compass his end than by going very frequently to 
hear preachers of that numerous class whose dis- 
courses are always sensible and in good taste, and 
also sickeningly dull and tiresome. Half-an-hour 
under the instruction of such good men has often- 
times appeared like about four hours. But for quiet 
folk, living in the country, and who have never held 



3/6 Htirry and Leisure. 

the office of attorney-general or secretary of state, two 
liours fomi quite too short a vista to permit of sitting 
down to begin any serious work, such as writing a 
sermon or an article. Two hours will not afford 
elbow-room. One is cramped in it. Give me a 
clear prospect of five or six ; so shall I begin an 
essay. It is quite evident that Hazlitt was a man of 
the town, accustomed to live in a huny, and to fancy 
short blinks of unoccupation to be leisure, — even as a 
man long dwelling in American woods might think 
a little open glade quite an extensive clearing. He 
begins his essay on Living to One's-se/f, by saying that 
being in the country he has a fine opportunity of 
writing on that long-contemplated subject, and of 
writing at leisure, because he has three hours good 
before him, not to mention a partridge getting ready 
for his supper. Ah, not enough ! Very well for the 
fast-going, high-pressure London mind ; but quite 
insufficient for the deliberate, slow-running country 
one, that has to overcome a great inertia. How 
many good ideas, or at least ideas which he thinks 
good, will occur to the rustic writer ; and be cast 
aside when he reflects that he has but two hours 
to sit at his task, and that therefore he has not a 
moment to spare for collateral matters, but nmst keep 
to the even thread of his story or his argument ! A 
man who has four miles to walk within an hour has 



Hurry and Leisure. 377 

little time to stop and look at the view on either 
hand ; and no time at all for scrambling over the 
hedge to gather some wild flowers. But now I 
rejoice in the feeling of an unlimited horizon before 
me, in the regard of time. Various new books are 
lying on the grass ; and on the top of the heap, a 
certain number of that trenchant and brilliant peri- 
odical, the Saturday Review. This is delightful ! It 
is jolly ! And let us always be glad, if through 
training, or idiosyncrasy, we have come to this, my 
reader, that whenever you and I enjoy this tranquil 
feeling of content, there mingles with it a deep sense 
of gratitude. I should be very sorry to-day, if I did 
not know Whom to thank for all this, I like the 
simple natural piety which has given to various seats, 
at the top of various steep hills in Scotland, the 
homely name of Rest and he thankful ! I trust I am 
now doing both these things. O ye men who have 
never been overworked and overdriven, never kept for 
weeks on a constant strain and in a feverish hurry, 
you don't know what you miss ! Sweet and delicious 
as cool water is to the man parched with thirst, is 
leisure to the man just extricated from breathless 
hurry ! And nauseous as is that same water to the 
man whose thirst has been completely quenched, 
is leisure to the man whose life is nothing but 
leisure. 



37^ Hurry and Lcistire. 

. Let me pick up that number of the Saturday Review^ 
and turn to the article which is entitled Smith's Drag.''' 
That article treats of a certain essay which the present 
writer once contributed to a certain monthly maga- 
zine ;t and it sets out the desultory fashion in which 
his comi:)ositions wander about. I have read the 
article with great amusement and pleasure. In the 
main it is perfectly just. Does not the avowal say 
something for the writer's good humour 1 Not fre- 
quently does the reviewed acknowledge that he was 
quite rightly pitched into. Let me, however, say to 
the very clever and smart author of Smitlis Drag., that 
he is to some extent mistaken in his theory as to my 
system of essay-writing. It is not entirely true that I 
begin my essays with irrelevant descriptions of scenery, 
horses, and the like, merely because when reviewing a 
book of heavy metaphysics I know nothing about my 
subject, and care nothing about it, and have nothing 
to say about it ; and so am glad to get over a page or 
two of my production without bona fide going at my 
subject. Such a consideration, no doubt, is not with- 
out its weight ; and besides this, holding that every 
way of discussing all things whatsoever is good except 
the tiresome, I think that even Smith's Drag serves a 
useful end if it pulls one a little way through a heavy 

* June 4, i8s9, pp. 677-8. 

t Concerning Man and his Dwelling-place. — Erasers Magazine, June 
1859, pp. 645-661. 



Hurry and Leisure. 379 

discussion ; as the short inclined plane set Mr. Hen- 
som's aerial machine ofif with a good start, without 
which it could not fly. But there is more than this in 
the case. The writer holds by a grand principle. The 
writer's great reason for saying something of the scenery 
amid which he is writing is, that he believes that it 
materially affects the thought produced, and ought to 
be taken in connexion with it. You would not give a 
just idea of a country house by giving us an architect's 
elevation of its facade, and shewing nothing of the hills 
by which it is backed, and the trees and shrubbery by 
which it is surrounded. So, too, with thought. We 
tliink in time and space ; and unless you are a very 
great man, writing a book like Butler's Analogy^ the 
outward scenes amid which you write will colour all 
your abstract thought. Most people hate abstract 
thought. Give it in a setting of scene and circum- 
stances, and then ordinary folk will accept it. Set a 
number of essays in a story, however slight, and hun- 
dreds will read them who would never have looked 
twice at the bare essays. Human interest and a sense 
of reality are thus communicated. When any one 
says to me, ' I think thus and thus of some abstract 
topic,' I like to say to him, ' Tell me where you thought 
it, how you thought it, what you were looking at when 
you thought it, and to whom you talked about it.' I 
deny that in essays what is wanted is results. Give me 



380 Hurry and Leisure. 



processes. Shew me how the results are arrived at. 
In some cases, doubtless, this is inexpedient. You 
would not enjoy your dinner if you inquired too mi- 
nutely into the previous history of its component ele- 
ments before it appeared upon your table. You might 
not care for one of Goldsmith's or Sheridan's pleasant- 
ries if you traced too curiously the steps by which it 
was licked into shape. Not so with the essay. And 
by exliibiting the making of his essay, as well as the 
essay itself when made, the essayist is enabled to pre- 
serve and exhibit many thoughts which he could turn 
to no account did he exhibit only his conclusions. It 
is a grand idea to represent two or three friends as 
discussing a subject. For who that has ever written 
upon abstract subjects, or conversed upon them, but 
knows that very often what seem capital ideas occur 
to him, which he has not had time to write down or to 
utter before he sees an answer to them, before he dis- 
covers that they are unsound. Now, to the essayist 
writing straightforward these thoughts are lost ; he can- 
not exhibit them. It will not do to write them and 
then add that now he sees they are wrong. Here, 
then, is the great use — one great use — of the Ellesmere 
and Dunsford, who shall hold friendly counsel with the 
essayist. They, understood to be talking off-hand, can 
state all these interesting and striking though unsound 
views ; and then the more deliberate Milverton can 



Hurry and Leisure. 381 

shew that they are wrong. And the three friends com- 
bined do but represent the phases of thought and feel- 
ing in a single individual : for who does not know that 
every reflective man is, at the very fewest, ' three gen- 
tlemen at once % ' Let me say for myself, that it seems 
to me that no small part of the charm which there is 
about the Friends in Council and the Companions of 
My Solitude arises from the use of the two expedients : 
of exhibiting processes as well as results, of shewing 
how views are formed as well as the views themselves ; 
and also of setting the whole abstract part of the work 
in a framework of scenes and circumstances. All this 
makes one feel a life-like reality in the entire picture 
presented, and enables one to open the leaves with a 
home-like and friendly sympathy. Do not fancy, my 
brilliant reviewer, that I pretend to write like that 
thoughtful and graceful author, so rich in wisdom, 
in wit, in pathos, in kindly feeling. All I say is, 
that I have learned from him the grand principle, 
that abstract thought, for ordinary readers, must 
gain reality and interest from a setting of time and 
place. 

There is the green branch of the tree, waving about. 
The breeze is a little stronger, but still the air is per- 
fectly warm. Let me be leisurely; I feel a little 
hurried with writing that last paragraph ; I wrote it 
too quickly. To write a paragraph too quickly, putting 



382 Hurry and L eisure. 

in too much pressure of steam, will materially accele- 
rate the pulse. That is an end greatly to be avoided. 
Who shall write hastily of leisure ! Fancy Izaak Wal- 
ton going out fishing, and constantly looking at his 
watch every five minutes, for fear of not catching the 
express train in half-an-hour ! It would be indeed a 
grievous inconsistency. The old gentleman might 
better have stayed at home. 

It is all very well to be occasionally, for two or 
three days, or even for a fortnight, in a hurry. Every 
earnest man, with work to do, will find that occasion- 
ally there comes a pressure of itj there comes a crowd 
of things which must be done quickly if they are done 
at all ; and the condition thus induced is hurry. I am 
aware, of course, that there is a distinction between 
haste and huriy — hurry adding to rapidity the element 
of painful confusion ; but in the case of ordinary 
people, haste generally implies hurry. And it will 
never do to become involved in a mode of life which 
implies a constant breathless pushing on. It must 
be a horrible thing to go through life in a hurry. It 
is highly expedient for all, it is absolutely necessary 
for most men, that they should have occasional leisure. 
Many enjoyments — perhaps all the tranquil and en- 
during enjoyments of life — cannot be felt except in 
leisure. And the best products of the human mind and 



Hurry and Leisure. 383 

heart can be brought forth only in leisure. Little does 
he know of the calm, unexciting, unwearying, lasting 
satisfaction of life, who has never known what it is to 
place the leisurely hand in the idle pocket, and to 
saunter to and fro. Mind, I utterly despise the idler 
— the loafer, as Yankees term him, who never does 
anything — whose idle hands are always in his idle 
pockets, and who is always sauntering to and fro. 
Leisure, be it remembered, is the intermission of 
labour ; it is the blink of idleness in the life of a hard- 
working man. It is only in the case of such a man 
that leisure is dignified, commendable, or enjoyable. 
But to him it is all these, and more. Let us not be 
ever driving on. The machinery, physical and mental, 
will not stand it. It is fit that one should occasionally 
sit down on a grassy bank, and look listlessly, for a 
long time, at the daisies around, and watch the patches 
of bright-blue sky through green leaves overhead. It 
is right to rest on a large stone by the margin of a 
river ; to rest there on a summer day for a long time, 
and to watch the lapse of the water as it passes away, 
and to listen to its silvery ripple over the pebbles. 
Who but a blockhead will think you idle ? Of course, 
blockheads may ; but you and I, my reader, do not 
care a rush for the opinion of blockheads. It is fit 
that a man should have time to chase his little children 
about the green, to make a kite and occasionally fly 



384 Hurry and Leisure. 

it, to rig a ship and occasionally sail it, for the happi- 
ness of these little folk. There is nothing unbecoming 
in making your Newfoundland dog go into the water 
to bring out sticks, nor in teaching a lesser dog to 
stand on his hinder legs. No doubt Goldsmith was 
combining leisure with work when Reynolds one day 
visited him ; but it was leisure that aided the work. 
The painter entered the poet's room unnoticed. The 
poet was seated at his desk, with his pen in his hand, 
and with his paper before him ; but he had turned 
away from The Traveller., and with uplifted hand was 
looking towards a corner of the room, Avhere a little 
dog sat with difficulty on his haunches, with imploring 
eyes. Reynolds looked over the poet's shoulder, and 
read a couplet whose ink was still wet : — 

By sports like these are all their cares beguiled ; 
The sports of children satisfy the child. 

Surely, my friend, you will never again read that 
couplet, so simply and felicitously expressed, without 
remembering the circumstances in which it was written. 
Who should know better than Goldsmith what simple 
pleasures ' satisfy the child 1' 

It is fit that a busy man should occasionally be able 
to stand for a quarter of an hour by the drag of his 
friend Smith ; and walk round the horses, and smooth 
down their fore-legs, and pull their ears, and drink 




MANSE, FKOM THE HII.I. BEHINn. 



in their general aspect, and enjoy the rich colour 
of their bay coats gleaming in the sunshine ; and 
minutely and critically inspect the drag, its painting, 
its cushions, its fur robes, its steps, its spokes, its 
silver caps, its lamps, its entire expression. These 
are enjoyments that last, and that cannot be had 
save in leisure. They are calm and innocent ; they 
do not at all quicken the pulse, or fever the brain ; 
it is a good sign of a man if he feels them as enjoy- 
ments ; it shews that he has not indurated his moral 
palate by appliances highly spiced with the cayenne 
of excitement, all of which border on vice, and most 
of which imply it. 

c c 



386 Hurry and Leisure. 

Let it be remembered, in the praise of leisure, that 
only in leisure will the human mind yield many of its 
best products. Calm views, sound thoughts, healthful 
feelings, do not originate in a hurry or a fever. I do 
not forget the wild geniuses who wrote some of the 
finest English tragedies — men like Christopher Mar- 
lowe, Ford, Massinger, Dekker, and Otway. No 
doubt they lived in a whirl of wild excitement, yet they 
turned off many fine and immortal thoughts. But 
their thought was essentially morbid, and their feeling 
hectic : all their views of life and things were unsound. 
And the beauty with which their writings are flushed 
all over, is like the beauty that dwells in the brow too 
transparent, the cheek too rosy, and the eye too 
bright, of a fair girl dying of decline. It is entirely 
a hot-house thing, and away from the bracing atmo- 
sphere of reality and truth. Its sweetness palls, its 
beauty frightens ; its fierce passion and its wild despair 
are the things in which it is at home. I do not believe 
the stories which are told about Jeffrey scribbling off 
his articles while dressing for a ball, or after return- 
ing from one at four in the morning : the fact is, 
nothing good for much was ever produced in that 
jaunty, hasty fashion, which is suggested by such a 
phrase as scribbled off. Good ideas flash in a moment 
on the mind : but they are very crude then ; and they 
must be mellowed and matured by time and in leisure. 



Hurry and Leisure. 387 



It is pure nonsense to say that the Poetry of the A?iti- 
jacobin was produced by a lot of young men sitting 
over their wine, very much excited, and talking very 
loud, and two or three at a time. Some happy 
impromptu hits may have been elicited by that mental 
friction ; but, rely upon it, the Needy Knife- Gritider, 
and the song whose chorus is Niversity of Gottingen^ 
were composed when their author was entirely alone, 
and had plenty of time for thinking. Brougham is an 
exception to all rules \ he certainly did write his Dis- 
course of Natural Theology while rent asunder by all 
the multifarious engagements of a Lord Chancellor ; 
but, after all, a great deal that Brougham has done 
exhibits merely the smartness of a sort of intellectual 
legerdemain ; and that celebrated Discoiirse, so far as 
I remember it, is remarkably poor stuff. I am now 
talking not of great geniuses, but of ordinary men of 
education, when I maintain that to the labourer whose 
work is mental, and especially to the man whose work 
it is to write, leisure is a pure necessary of intellectual 
existence. There must be long seasons of quiescence 
between the occasional efforts of production. An 
electric eel cannot always be giving off shocks. The 
shock is powerful, but short, and then long time is 
needful to rally for another. A field, however good 
its soil, will not grow wheat year after year. Such a 
crop exhausts the soil : it is a strain to produce it ; 



388 Hurry and L cisiire. 



and after it the field must lie fallow for a while,— 
it must have leisure, in short. So is it with the 
mind. Who does not know that various literary 
electric eels, by repeating their shocks too frequently, 
have come at last to give off an electric result which 
is but the faintest and washiest echo of the thrilling 
and startling ones of earlier days? Festus was a 
strong and unmistakable shock ; The Angel World 
was much weaker ; Tlie Mystic was extremely weak ; 
and The Age was twaddle. Why did the author let 
himself down in such a fashion % The writer of 
Festus was a grand, mysterious image in many youth- 
ful minds : dark, wonderful, not quite comprehen- 
sible. The writer of The Age is a smart but silly 
little fellow, whom we could readily slap upon the 
back and tell him he had rather made a fool of 
himself And who does not feel how weak the suc- 
cessive shocks of various eminent authors are grow- 
ing % They strike out nothing new. Anything good 
in their recent productions is just the old thing, with 
the colours a good deal washed out, and with salt 
which has lost its savour. Poor stuff comes of con- 
stantly cutting and cropping. The potatoes of the 
mind grow small ; the intellectual wheat comes to 
have no ears ; the moral turnips are infected with the 
finger-and-toe disease. The mind is a reservoir which 
can be emptied in a much shorter time than it is 



possible to fill it. It fills through an infinity of small 
tubes, many so small as to act by capillary attraction. 
But in writing a book, or even an article, it empties 
as through a twelve-inch pipe. It is to me quite 
wonderfiil that most of the sermons one hears are 
so good as they are, considering the unintermittent 
stream in which most preachers are compelled to 
produce them. I have sometimes thought, in listen- 
ing to the discourse of a really thoughtful and able 
clergyman — If you, my friend, had to write a sermon 
once a month instead of once a week, how very ad- 
mirable it would be ! 

Some stupid people are afraid of confessing that 
they ever have leisure. They wish to palm off upon 
the human race the delusion that they, the stupid 
people, are always hard at work. They are afraid of 
being thought idle unless they maintain this fiction. 
I have known clergymen who would not on any ac- 
count take any recreation in their own parishes, lest 
they should be deemed lazy. They would not fish, 
they would not ride, they would not garden, they 
would never be seen leaning upon a gate, and far less 
carving their name upon a tree. What absurd folly ! 
They might just as well have pretended that they did 
without sleep, or without food, as without leisure. 
You cannot always drive the machine at its full speed. 
I know, indeed, that the machine may be so driven 



390 Hurry and Leisure. 

for two or three years at the beginning of a man's 
professional hfe ; and that it is possible for a man to 
go on for such a period with hardly any appreciable 
leisure at all. But it knocks up the machine : it 
wears it out : and after an attack or two of nervous 
fever, we learn what we should have known from the 
beginning, that a far larger amount of tangible work 
will be accomplished by regular exertion of moderate 
degree and continuance, than by going ahead in the 
feverish and unrestful fashion in which reall)' earnest 
men are so ready to begin their task. It seems 
indeed, to be the rule rather than the exception, that 
clerg)anen should break down in strength and spirits 
in about three years after entering the Church. Some 
die : but happily a larger number get well again, and 
for the remainder of their days work at a more rea- 
sonable rate. As for the sermons written in that 
feverish stage of life, what crude and extravagant 
things they are : stirring and striking, perhaps, but 
hectic and forced, and entirely devoid of the repose, 
reality, and daylight feeling of actual life and fact. 
Yet how many good, injudicious people, are ever 
ready to expect of the new curate or rector an amount 
of work which man cannot do ; and to express their 
disappointment if that work is not done. It is so 
very easy to map out a task which you are not to do 
yourself: and you feel so little wearied by the toils 



Hurry and Leisure. 391 



of other men ! As for you, my young friend, begin- 
ning your parochial life, don't be ill-pleased with the 
kindly-meant advice of one who speaks from the 
experience of a good many years, and who has him- 
self known all that you feel, and foolishly done all that 
you are now disposed to do. Consider for how many 
hours of the day you can labour, without injury to 
body or mind : labour faithfully for those hours, and 
for no more. Never mind about what may be said 
by Miss Limejuice and Mr. Snarling. They will find 
fault at any rate ; and you will mind less about their 
fault-finding if you have an unimpaired digestion, and 
unaffected lungs, and an unenlarged heart. Don't 
pretend that you are always working : it would be a 
sin against God and Nature if you were. Say frankly, 
There is a certain amount of work that I can do ; and 
that I tvill do : but I must have my hours of leisure. 
I must have them for the sake of my parishioners as 
well as for my own ; for leisure is an essential part of 
that mental discipline which will enable my mind to 
grow and turn off sound instruction for their benefit. 
Leisure is a necessary part of true life ; and if I am 
to live at all, I must have it. Surely it is a thousand 
times better candidly and manfully to take up that 
ground, than to take recreation on the sly, as though 
you were ashamed of being found out in it, and to 
disguise your leisure as though it were a sin. I 



392 Hurry and Leisure. 



heartily despise the clergyman who reads Adam 
Bede secretly in his study, and when any one comes 
in, pops the volume into his waste-paper basket. An 
innocent thing is wrong to you if you think it wrong, 
remember. I am sorry for the man who is quite 
ashamed if any one finds him chasing his little chil- 
dren about the green before his house, or standing 
looking at a bank of primroses, or a bed of violets, or 
a high wall covered with ivy. Don't give in to that 
feeling for one second. You are doing right in doing 
all that ; and no one but an ignorant, stupid, ma- 
licious, little-minded, vulgar, contemptible blockhead 
will think you are doing wrong. On a sunny day, 
you are not idle if you sit down and look for an hour 
at the ivied wall, or at an apple-tree in blossom, or at 
the river gliding by. You are not idle if you walk 
about your garden, noticing the progress and enjoying 
the beauty and fragi-ance of each individual rose-tree 
on such a charming June day as this. You are not 
idle if you sit down upon a garden seat, and take 
your little boy upon your knee, and talk with him 
about the many little matters which give interest to 
his little life. You are doing something which may 
help to establish a bond between you closer than that 
of blood ; and the estranging interests of after years 
may need it all. And you do not know, even as 
regards the work (if of composition) at which you are 



Hurry and Leisure. 393 

busy, what good ideas and impulses may come of the 
quiet time of looking at the ivy, or the blossoms, or 
the stream, or your child's sunny curls. Such things 
often start thoughts which might seem a hundred 
miles away from them. That they do so, is a fact to 
which the experience of numbers of busy and thought- 
ful men can testify. Various thick skulls may think 
the statement mystical and incomprehensible : for the 
sake of such let me confirm it by high authority. Is 
it not curious, by the way, that in talking to some 
men and women, if you state a view a little beyond 
their mark, you will find them doubting and disbe- 
lieving it so long as they regard it as resting upon 
your own authority ; but if you can quote anything 
that sounds like it from any printed book, or even 
newspaper, no matter how little worthy the author of 
the article or book may be, you will find the view 
received with respect, if not with credence % The 
mere fact of its having been printed gives any opinion 
whatsoever much weight with some folk. And your 
opinion is esteemed as if of greater value, if you can 
only shew that any human being agreed with you in 
entertaining it. So, my friend, if Mr. Snarling thinks 
it a delusion that you may gain some thoughts and 
feelings of value, in the passive contemplation of 
nature, infomi him that the following lines were 
written by one Wordsworth, a stamp-distributor in 



394 Hurry and Leisure. 



Cumberland, regarded by many competent judges as 
a very wise man : — 

Why, William, on that old gray stone, 
Thus for the length of half-a-day. 

Why, William, sit you thus alone. 
And dream your time away ? 

One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake. 
When life was sweet, I knew not why, 

To me my good friend Matthew spake, 
And thus I made reply : 

The eye — it cannot choose but see ; 

We cannot bid the ear be still ; 
Our bodies feel, where'er they be, 

Against or with our will. 

Nor less I deem that there are Powers 
Which of themselves our minds impress : 

That we can feed this mind of ours 
In a wise passiveness. 

Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum 

Of things for ever speaking. 
That nothing of itself will come 

But we must still be seeking ? 

Then ask not wherefore, here, alone. 

Conversing as I may, 
I sit upon this old gray stone. 

And dream my time away I 

Such an opinion is sound and just. Not that I 



Hurry and Leisure. 395 

believe that instead of sending a lad to Eton and 
Oxford, it would be expedient to make him sit down 
on a gray stone, by the side of any lake or river, and 
wait till wisdom came to him through the gentle 
teaching of nature. The instruction to be thus ob- 
tained must be supplementary to a good education, 
college and professional, obtained in the usual way ; 
and it must be sought in intervals of leisure, inter- 
calated in a busy and energetic life. But thus inter- 
vening, and coming to supplement other training, I 
believe it will serve ends of the most valuable kind, 
and elicit from the mind the very best material which 
is there to be elicited. Some people say they work 
best under pressure : De Quincey, in a recent volume, 
declares that the conviction that he must produce a 
certain amount of writing in a limited time has often 
seemed to open new cells in his brain, rich in excel- 
lent thought ; and I have known preachers (very poor 
ones) declare that their best sermons were written 
after dinner on Saturday. As for the sermons, the 
best were bad ; as for De Quincey, he is a wonderful 
man. Let us have elbow-room, say I, when we have 
to write anything ! Let there be plenty of time, as 
well as plenty of space. Who could write if cramped 
up in that chamber of torture, called Little Ease, in 
which a man could neither sit, stand, nor lie, but in a 
constrained fashion % And just as bad is it to be 




MISS LIMEJUICE. 



cramped up into three days, when to stretch one's 
self demands at least six. Do you think Wordsworth 
could have written against time 1 or that lu Memoriarn 
was penned in a hurry % 

Said Miss Limejuice, I saw Mr. Swetter, the new 
rector, to-day. Ah ! she added, with a malicious 
smile, I fear he is growing idle already, though he 
has not been in the parish six months. I saw him, 
at a quarter before two precisely, standing at his gate 



Hurry and Leisure. 397 

with his hands in his pockets. I observed that he 
looked for three minutes over the gate into the clover 
field he has got. And then Smith drove up in his 
drag, and stopped and got out ; and he and the rector 
entered into conversation, evidently about the horses, 
for I saw Mr. Swetter walk round them several times, 
and rub down their fore-legs. Now / think he should 
have been busy writing his sermon, or visiting his sick. 
Such, let me assure the incredulous reader, are the 
words which I have myself heard Miss Limejuice, and 
her mother, old Mrs. Snarling Limejuice, utter more 
than once or twice. Knowing the rector well, and 
knowing how he portions out his day, let me explain 
to those candid individuals the state of facts. At ten 
o'clock precisely, having previously gone to the stable 
and walked round the garden, Mr. Swetter sat down 
at his desk in his study and worked hard till one. At 
two he is to ride up the parish to see various sick 
persons among the cottagers. But from one to two he 
has laid his work aside, and tried to banish all thought 
of his work. During that period he has been running 
about the green with his little boy, and even rolling 
upon the grass ; and he has likewise strung together a 
number of daisies on a thread, which you might have 
seen round little Charlie's neck if you had looked 
sharply. He has been unbending his mind, you see, 
and enjoying leisure after his work. It is entirely true 



39^ Hurry and Leisure. 

that he did look into the clover field and enjoy the 
fragrance of it, which you probably regard as a piece 
of sinful self-indulgence. And his friend coming up, 
it is likewise certain that he examined his horses (a 
new pair) with much interest and minuteness. Let 
me add, that only contemptible humbugs will think 
the less of him for all this. The days are past in 
which the ideal clergyman was an emaciated eremite, 
who hardly knew a cow from a horse, and was quite 
incapable of sympathising with his humbler parish- 
ioners in their little country cares. And some little 
knowledge as to horses and cows, not to mention 
potatoes and turnips, is a most valuable attainment to 
the country parson. If his parishioners find that he is 
entirely ignorant of those matters which they under- 
stand best, they will not unnaturally draw the con- 
clusion that he knows nothing ; while if they find 
that he is fairly acquainted with those things which 
they themselves understand, they will conclude that 
he knows everything. Helplessness and ignorance 
appear contemptible to simple folk, though the help- 
lessness should appear in the lack of power to manage 
a horse, and the ignorance in a man's not knowing 
the way in which potatoes are planted. To you. Miss 
Limejuice, let me further say a word as to your parish 
clergyman. Mr. Swetter, you probably do not know, 
was Senior Wrangler at Cambridge. He chose his 



Hurry and Leisure. 399 

present mode of life, not merely because he felt a 
special leaning to the sacred profession, though he did 
feel that strongly ; but also because he saw that in 
the Church, and in the care of a quiet rural parish, 
he might hope to combine the faithful discharge of 
his duty with the enjoyment of leisure for thought ; 
he might be of use in his generation without being 
engaged to that degree that, like some great barristers, 
he should grow a stranger to his children. He con- 
cluded that it is one great happiness of a country 
parson's life, that he may work hard without working 
feverishly ; he may do his duty, yet not bring on an 
early paralytic stroke. Swetter might, if he had liked, 
have gone in for the Great Seal ; the man who was 
second to him will probably get it ; but he did not 
choose. Do you not remember how Baron Alderson, 
who might well have aspired at being a Chief-Justice 
or a Lord Chancellor, fairly decided that the prize was 
not worth the cost, and was content to turn aside from 
the worry of the bar into the comparative leisure of 
a puisne judgeship % It was not worth his while, he 
rightly considered, to run the risk of working himself 
to death, or to live for years in a breathless hurry. 
No doubt the man who thus judges must be content 
to see others seize the great prizes of human affairs. 
Hot and trembling hands, for the most part, grasp 
these. And how many work breathlessly, and give 



400 Hurry and Leisure. 

up the tranquil enjoyment of life, yet never grasp them 
after all ! 

There is no period at which the feeling of leisure is 
a more delightful one, than during breakfast and after 
breakfast on a beautiful summer morning in the 
country. It is a slavish and painful thing to know 
that instantly you rise froin the breakfast-table you 
must take to your work. And in that case your mind 
will be fretting and worrying away all the time that the 
hurried meal lasts. But it is delightful to be able to 
breakfast leisurely ; to read over your letters twice ; 
to skim the Times., just to see if there is anything par- 
ticular in it (the serious reading of it being deferred 
till later in the day) ; and then to go out and saunter 
about the garden, taking an interest in whatever ope- 
rations may be going on there ; to walk down to the 
little bridge and sit on the parapet, and look over at 
the water foaming through below ; to give your dogs a 
swim ; to sketch out the rudimentary outline of a kite, 
to be completed in the evening ; to stick up, amid 
shrieks of excitement and delight, a new coloured 
picture in the nursery ; to go out to the stable and 
look about there ; — and to do all this with the sense 
that there is no neglect — that you can easily overtake 
your day's work notwithstanding. For this end the 
country human being should breakfast early : not 



Hurry and Leisure. 401 



later than nine o'clock. Breakfast will be over by half- 
])asl nine ; and the half hour till ten is as much as it 
is safe to give to leisure, without running the risk of 
dissipating the mind too much for steady application 
to work. After ten one does not feel comfortable in 
idling about on a common working-day. You feel 
that you ought to be at your task ; and he who would 
enjoy country leisure must beware of fretting the fine 
mechanism of his moral perceptions by doing anything 
which he thinks even in the least degree wrong. 

And here, after thinking of the preliminary half 
hour of leisure before you sit down to your work, let 
me advise that when you fairly go at your work, if of 
comjiosition, you should go at it leisurely. 1 do not 
mean that you should work with half a will, with a 
wandering attention, with a mind running away upon 
something else. What 1 mean is, that you should 
beware of flying at your task, and keeping at it, with 
such a stretch, that every fibre in your body and your 
mind is on the strain, is tense and tightened up ; so 
that when you stop, after your two or three hours at 
it, you feel ([uite shattered and exhausted. A great 
many men, especially those of a nervous and sanguine 
temperament, write at too high a ]jressure. 'I'hey have 
a hundred and twenty pounds on tiie scjuare inch. 
Every nerve is like the string of Robin Hood's bow. 
All this does no good. It does not a])preciably affect 

D D 



402 Hurry and Leisure. 

the quality of the article manufactured, nor does it 
much accelerate the rate of production. But it wears 
a man out awfully. It sucks him like an orange. It 
leaves him a discharged Leyden jar, a torpedo entirely 
used up. You have got to walk ten miles. You do it 
at the rate of four miles an hour. You accomplish 
the distance in two hours and a half; and you come 
in, not extremely done up. But another day, with the 
same walk before you, you put on extra steam, and 
walk at four and a half miles an hour, perhaps at five. 
{Mem. : People who say they walk six miles an hour 
are talking nonsense. It cannot be done, unless by a 
trained pedestrian.) You are on a painful stretch all 
the journey : you save, after all, a very few minutes ; 
and you get to your journey's end entirely knocked up. 
Like an overdriven horse, you are off your feed ; and 
you can do nothing useful all the evening. I am well 
aware that the good advice contained in this paragraph 
will not have the least effect on those who read it. 
Fimgar mani immere. I know how little all this goes 
for with an individual now not far away. And, indeed, 
no one can say that because two men have produced 
the same result in work accomplished, therefore they 
have gone through the same amount of exertion. Nor 
am I now thinking of the vast differences between men 
in point of intellectual power. I am content to sup- 
pose that they shall be, intellectually, precisely on a 



Hurry and Leisure. 403 



level : yet one shall go at his work with a painful, 
heavy strain ; and another shall get through his lightly, 
airily, as if it were pastime. One shall leave off fresh 
and buoyant ; the other, jaded, languid, aching all 
over. And in this respect, it is probable that, if your 
natural constitution is not such as to enable you to 
work hard yet leisurely, there is no use in advising you 
to take things easily. Ah, my poor friend, you cannot ! 
But at least you may restrict yourself from going at any 
task on end, and keeping yourself ever on the fret until 
it is fairly finished. Set yourself a fitting task for each 
day ; and on no account exceed it. There are men 
who have a morbid eagerness to get through any work 
on which they are engaged. They would almost wish 
to go right on through all the toils of life and be done 
with them ; and then, like Alexander, ' sit down and 
rest.' The prospect of anything yet to do appears to 
render the enjoyment of present repose impossible. 
There can be no more unhealthful state of mmd. The 
day will never come when we shall have got through 
our work : and well for us that it never will. Why 
disturb the quiet of to-night by thinking of the toils 
of to-morrow % There is deep wisdom, and accurate 
knowledge of human nature, in the advice, given by 
the Soundest and Kindest of all advisers, and appli- 
cable in a hundred cases, to ' Take no thought for the 
morrow.' 



404 Hurry and Leisure. 

It appears to me, that in these days of hurried life, 
a great and valuable end is sei'ved by a class of things 
which all men of late have taken to abusing, — to wit, 
the extensive class of dull, heavy, uninteresting, good, 
sensible, pious sermons. They afford many educated 
men almost their only intervals of waking leisure. 
You are in a cool, quiet, solemn place : the semion 
is going forward : you have a general impression that 
you are listening to many good advices and important 
doctrines, and the entire result upon your mind is 
beneficial ; and at the same time there is nothing in 
the least striking or startling to destroy the sense of 
leisure, or to painfully arouse the attention and quicken 
the pulse. Neither is there a syllable that can jar 
on the most fastidious taste. All points and corners 
of thought are rounded off. The entire composition 
is in the highest degree gentlemanly, scholarly, cor- 
rect \ but you feel that it is quite impossible to attend 
to it. And you do not attend to it ; but, at the same 
time, you do not quite turn your attention to any- 
thing else. Now, you remember how a dying father, 
once upon a time, besought his prodigal son to spend 
an hour daily in solitary thought : and what a bene- 
ficial result followed. The dull sermon may serve 
an end as desirable. In church you are alone, in 
the sense of being isolated from all companions, or 
from the possibility of holding communication with 



Hurry and Leisure. 405 

anybody : and the wearisome sermon, if utterly use- 
less otherwise, is useful in giving a man time to think, 
in circumstances which will generally dispose him to 
think seriously. There is a restful feeling, too, for 
which you are the better. It is a fine thing to feel 
that church is a place where, if even for two hours 
only, you are quite free from worldly business and 
cares. You know that all these are waiting for you 
outside : but at least you are free from their actual 
endurance here. I am persuaded, and I am happy 
to entertain the persuasion, that men are often much 
the better for being present during the preaching of 
sermons to which they pay very little attention. Only 
some such belief as this could make one think, with- 
out much sorrow, of the thousands of discourses which 
are preached every Sunday over Britain, and of the 
class of ears and memories to which they are given. 
You see that country congregation coming out of 
the ivy-covered church in that beautiful churchyard. 
Look at their faces, the ploughmen, the dairy-maids, 
the drain-diggers, the stable-boys : what could they 
do towards taking in the gist of that well-reasoned, 
scholarly, elegant piece of composition which has 
occupied the last half-hour % Why, they could not 
understand a sentence of it. Yet it has done them 
good. The general effect is wholesome. They have 
got a little push, they have felt themselves floating on 



4o6 Hurry mid Leisure'. 



a gentle current, going in the right direction. Only 
enthusiastic young divines expect the mass of their 
congregation to do all they exhort them to do. You 
must advise a man to do a thing a hundred times 
probably, before you can get him to do it once. 
You know that a breeze, blowing at thirty-five miles 
an hour, does very well if it carries a large ship along 
in its own direction at the rate of eight. And even 
so, the practice of your hearers, though truly influ- 
enced by what you say to them, lags tremendously 
behind the rate of your preaching. Be content, my 
friend, if you can maintain a movement, sure though 
slow, in the right way. And don't get angry with 
your rural flock on Sundays if you often see on their 
blank faces, while you are preaching, the evidence 
that they are not taking in a word you say. And 
don't be entirely discouraged. You may be doing 
them good for all that. And if you do good at all, 
you know better than to grumble, though you may 
not be doing it in the fashion that you would like 
best. I have known men, accustomed to sit quiet, 
pensive, half-attentive, under the sermons of an easy- 
going but orthodox preacher, who felt quite indignant 
when they went to a church where their attention 
was kept on the stretch all the time the sermon 
lasted, whether they would or no. They felt that this 
intrusive interest about the discourse, compelling them 



Hurry and Leisure. 407 

to attend, was of the nature of an assault, and of an 
unjustifiable infraction of the liberty of the subject. 
Their feeling was, ' What earthly right has that man 
to make us listen to his sermon, without getting our 
consent % We go to church to rest : and lo ! he com- 
pels us to listen ! ' 

I do not forget, musing in the shade this beautiful 
summer-day, that there may be cases in which leisure 
is veiy much to be avoided. To some men, constant 
occupation is a thing that stands between them and 
utter wretchedness. You remember the poor man, 
whose story is so touchingly told by Borrow in The 
Romany Rye, who lost his wife, his children, all his 
friends, by a rapid succession of strokes ; and who 
declared that he would have gone mad if he had not 
resolutely set himself to the study of the Chinese 
language. Only constant labour of mind could ' keep 
the misery out of his head.' And years afterwards, 
if he paused from toil for even a few hours, the misery 
returned. The poor fisherman in The Antiquary 
was wrong in his philosophy, when Mr. Oldbuck 
found him, with trembling hands, trying to repair his 
battered boat the day after his son was buried. ' It's 
weel wi' you gentles,' he said, ' that can sit in the 
house wi' handkerchers at your een, when ye lose a 
freend ; but the like o' us maun to our wark again, 
if our hearts were beating as hard as my hammer ! ' 



4o8 Hurry and Leisure. 

We love the kindly sympathy that made Sir Walter 
write the words : but bitter as may be the effort with 
which the poor man takes to his heartless task again, 
surely he will all the sooner get over his sorrow. 
And it is with gentles, who can ' sit in the house ' as 
long as they like, that the great grief longest lingers. 
There is a wonderful efficacy in enforced work to 
tide one over every sort of trial. I saw not long 
since a number of pictures, admirably sketched, 
which had been sent to his family in England by 
an emigrant son in Canada, and which represented 
scenes in daily life there among the remote settlers. 
And I was very much struck with the sad expression 
which the faces of the emigrants always wore, when- 
ever they were represented in repose or inaction. 
I felt sure that those pensive faces set forth a 
sorrowful fact. Lying on a great bluff, looking down 
upon a lonely river ; or seated at the tent-door on 
a Sunday, when his task was laid apart ; — however 
the backwoodsman was depicted, if not in energetic 
action, there was always a very sad look upon the 
rough face. And it was a peculiar sadness— not like 
that which human beings would feel amid the scenes 
and friends of their youth : a look pensive, distant, 
full of remembrance, devoid of hope. You glanced 
at it, and you thought of Lord Eglintoun's truthful 
lines : — 



Hurry and Leisure. 409 

From the lone shieling on the misty island, 
Mountains divide us, and a world of seas : 

But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland, 
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides : 

Fair these broad meads, these hoary woods are 
grand,— 

But we are exiles from our fathers' land ! 

And you felt that much leisure will not suit there. 
Therefore, you stout backwoodsman, go at the huge 
forest-tree ; rain upon it the blows of your axe, as long 
as you can stand ; watch the fragments as they fly ; 
and jump briskly out of the way as the reeling giant 
falls ; — for all this brisk exertion will stand between 
vou and remembrances that would unman you. There 
is nothing very philosophical in the plan, to ' dance 
sad thoughts away,' which I remember as the chorus 
of some Canadian song. I doubt whether that pecu- 
liar specific will do much good. But you may tvork 
sad thoughts away ; you may crowd morbid feelings 
out of your mind by stout daylight toils ; and remem- 
ber that sad remembrances, too long indulged, tend 
strongly to the maudlin. Even Werter was little 
better than a fool ; and a contemptible fool was 
Mr. Augustus Moddle. 

How many of man's best works take for granted 
that the majority of cultivated persons, capable of 
enjoying them, shall have leisure in which to do so. 



41 o Htirry and Leisure. 

The architect, the artist, the landscape-gardener, the 
poet, spend their pains in producing that which can 
never touch the hurried man. I really feel that I act 
unkindly by the man who did that elaborate picking- 
out in the painting of a railway carriage, if I rush upon 
the platform at the last moment, pitch in my luggage, 
sit down and take to the Times., without ever having 
noticed whether the colour of the carriage is brown or 
blue. There seems a dumb pleading eloquence about 
even the accurate diagonal arrangement of the little 
woollen tufts in the morocco cushions, and the inter- 
laced network above one's head, where umbrellas go, 
as though they said, ' We are made thus neatly to be 
looked at, but we cannot make you look at us unless 
you choose ; and half the people who come into the 
carriage are so hurried that they never notice us.' 
And when I have seen a fine church-spire, rich in 
graceful ornament, rising up by the side of a city 
street, where hurried crowds are always passing by, 
not one in a thousand ever casting a glance at the 
beautiful object, I have thought, Now surely you are 
not doing what your designer intended ! When he 
spent so much of time, and thought, and pains ' in 
planning and executing all those beauties of detail, 
surely he intended them to be looked at ; and not 
merely looked at in their general effect, but followed 
and traced into their lesser graces. But he wrongly 




MONK MISS A LING. 



fancied that men would have time for that ; he forgot 
that, except on the sohtary artistic visitor, all he has 
done would be lost, through the nineteenth century's 
want of leisure. And you, architect of Melrose, when 
you designed that exquisite tracery, and decorated 
so perfectly that flying buttress, were you content to 
do so for the pleasure of knowing you did your 
work thoroughly and well ; or did you count on its 
producing on the minds of men in after-ages an 
impression which a prevailing hurry has prevented 
from being produced, save perhaps in one case in 
a thousand 1 And you, old monk, who spent half 
your life in writing and illuminating that magnificent 



4 1 2 Hurry and L eistire. 

Missal ; was your work its own reward in the pleasure 
Its execution gave you ; or did you actually fancy 
that mortal man would have time or patience — 
leisure, in short — to examine in detail all that you 
have done, and that interested you so much, and kept 
you eagerly engaged for so many hours together, on 
days the world has left four hundred years behind % 
I declare it touches me to look at that laborious 
appeal to men with countless hours to spare : men, in 
short, hardly now to be found in Britain. No doubt, 
all this is the old story : for how great a part of the 
higher and finer human work is done in the hope that 
it will produce an effect which it never will produce, 
and attract the interest of those who will never notice 
it ! Still, the ancient missal-writer pleased himself 
with the thought of the admiration of skilled ob- 
servers in days to come ; and so the fancy served its 
purpose. 

Thus at intervals through that bright summer-day, 
did the writer muse at leisure in the shade ; and note 
down the thoughts (such as they are) which you have 
here at length in this essay. The sun was still warm 
and cheerful when he quitted the lawn ; but some- 
how, looking back upon that day, the colours of the 
scene are paler than the fact, and the sunbeams feel 
comparatively chill. For memory cannot bring back 
things freshly as they lived, but only their faded 



Hurry and Leisure. 



413 



images. Faces in the distant past look wan ; voices 
sound thin and distant ; the landscape round is un- 
certain and shadowy. Do you not feel somehow, 
when you look back on ages forty centuries ago, as 
if people then spoke in whispers and lived in 
twilio-ht ? 




TWILIGHT. 







OLD BOATS. 



CONCLUSION. 



AND such, my friendly reader, are my Recrea- 
tions. It was pleasant to me, amid much work 
of a very different kind, to write these essays. I trust 
that it has not been very tiresome for you to read 
them. 

There is a peculiar happiness which is known to 
the essayist. There is a virtue about his work to 



Conclusion. 415 

draw the sting from the httle worries of hfe. If you 
fairly look some petty vexation of humanity in the 
face, and -write an account of it, it will never annoy 
you so much any more. It recurs : and it annoys 
you : but you have a latent feeling of satisfaction at 
finding how exactly accurate was your description of 
it ; how completely your present sensation runs into 
the mould you had made. It is a curious thing, too, 
that there is a certain pleasure in writing about a 
thing which was very unpleasant when it happened 
to one. You know how an artist makes a pleasing 
picture out of a poor cottage, in . which it would be 
very disagreeable to live. You know how a great 
painter makes a picture, which you often like to look 
at, of an event at which you would not have liked to 
have been present. You pause for a long time before 
the representation of some boors drinking ; or of a 
furious struggle in a guard-room ; or of a murdered 
man lying dead. Now, in fact, you would have got 
out of the way of such sights : the first two would have 
been disgusting : the last, at least ' a sorry sight.' 

It is not quite a case in point, that we look with 
great interest and pleasure at the representation of a 
sight which it would have been no worse than sad to 
see. Such a sight may have been elevating as well as 
saddening. I see a figure laid upon a bed : you know 
it is stiff and cold. It is a female figure : there is the 



41 6 Conclusion. 

fixed but beautiful face. And through the open win- 
dow, I see in the west the summer sunset blazing, 
and the golden light falling upon the pale features, 
and the closed eyes which will never open more till 
the sun has ceased to shine. I do not wonder that 
the exquisite genius of the painter fixed on such a 
scene, and preserved it with rigid accuracy, and wrote 
beneath his picture such words as these : — 

The sun shall no more be thy light by day ; neither for 
brightness shall the moon give light unto thee : but the 
Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God 
thy glory. 

Thy sun shall no more go down ; neither shall thy 
moon withdraw herself ; for the Lord shall be thine ever- 
lasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. 

But there is in this one respect an entire analogy 
between the feeling of the artist and the feeling of 
the essayist : that to both, this world is to a certain 
extent transfigured by the fact, that to each, things 
become comparatively pleasing if they would please 
when described or depicted, though they might be 
unpleasing in fact. Not merely are those things good 
which are good in themselves : those things are good 
which, though bad, will please and interest when re- 
presented. It is extremely certain, that there is a 
pleasure in writing about what there is no i)leasure in 
bearing ; and here is a happiness of the essayist. 



Conclusion. 417 

You are grossly cheated, my friend, by a man of most 
respectable character. You are worried by some 
glaring instance of that horrible dilatoriness, unfaith- 
fulness, and stupidity, which come across the suc- 
cessful issue of almost all human affairs. You are 
vexed, in short, at seeing how creakingly and jarringly 
and uneasily the machine of life and society manages 
to blunder on. Well, you suffer ; and you have no 
relief But the essayist's painful feeling at such 
things is much mitigated when he thinks that here is 
a subject for him : and when he goes and describes it. 
Once, it was to me unrelieved and unalloyed pain to 
be cheated : or to listen to the vapouring of some 
silly person. Now, though still I cannot say I like it, 
still I dislike it less. I make a mental note. It will 
all go into an essay. One gets something of the spirit 
of the morbid anatomist, to whom some peculiar 
phase of disease is infinitely more interesting than 
commonplace health. Interesting wrong becomes 
(must I confess it X) a finer sight than uninteresting 
right. You know how country servants rejoice in 
coming to tell you that something is amiss : that a 
horse is lame, or a pig dying, or a field of potatoes 
blighted. It is something to tell about. Perhaps the 
essayist knows the peculiar emotion. 

I sometimes have thought that the writer of fiction 
is to be envied. He has another life and world than 

E E 



4iJ 



Conclusion. 



that we see. He has a duality of being. He sits 
down to his desk ; and in a little he is far away, and 
away in a world where he is absolute monarch. It 
has not been so with me. In writing these essays, I 
have not been rapt away into heroic times and distant 
scenes, and into romantic tracts of feeUng. I have 
been writing amid daily work and worry, of daily 
work and worry, and of the little things by which daily 
work and worry are intensified or relieved. I cannot 
pretend to long experience of life ; nor perhaps to 
much. But from a quiet and lonely life, little varied, 
and very happy, I have sent out these essays month 
by month ; and I hope to send out more. 




LONDON 

PRINTED B V S P O T T I S W O O D E AND CO. 

NEW-STREET SQUARE 



THE 



ESSAYS AND CONTRIBUTIONS 
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THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON, 

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Concerning the Dignity of Diilness 



Concerning the Parson's Choice be- 
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Concerning Disappointment and Suc- 
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Concerning Giving Up and Coming 
Down 

Concerning the Worries of Life and 
How to Meet Them 



Concerning Growing Old 
Concerning Scylla and Charybdis ; 

with some Thoughts upon the Swing 

of the Pendulum 
Concerning Churchyards 
Concerning Summer Days 



LEISURE HOURS IN TOWN. 



Fourth Edition. 

Concerning the Parson's Leisure Hours 

in Town 
Concerning Screws : being Thoughts 

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Means 
Concerning Solitary Days 
Concerning Future Years 
Concerning Things Slowly Learnt 
Gone 



Discourse uf 



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Those who Never had a Chance 
College Life at Glasgow 



THE COMMONPLACE PHILOSOPHER IN 
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Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 3.?. 6d. 



To Work Again 

Concerning the World's Opinion : with 

some Thoughts on Cowed People 
Concerning the Sorrows of Childhood 
Concerning Atmospheres, with some 

Thoughts on Currents 
Concerning Beginnings and Ends 
Going On 



Concerning Disagreeable People 
Outside 
Getting On 

Concerning Man and his Dwelling- 
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Concerning a Great Scotch Preacher 
At the Land's End 



cn:^^ 



The Essays and Contribtttions of . 



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Second Series. Crown 8vo. 3^. 6ci. ^ 

Christian Consolation under Bereave-i <*•*" 

ment by Death 
The First Prayer in Solomon's Temple 
The Expectancy of Creation 
Living to One's Self 
The Coming Night 
Doctrine and Practice 
Patience 
St. Paul's Closing Retrospect and 

Prospect 



Praying Everywhere 

The Discipline of Sorrow 

He must Increase ; but I must De 

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( irieving the Holy Spirit 
Intolerance 
Needless Fears 
No Temple in Heaven 
All Saints 
Work 
Intercessory Prayer 



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OF A COUNTRY 



Essays Consolatory, .lEsthetical, Moral, Social, and Domestic. 
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By the Seaside 

Concerning Unpruned Trees 

Concerning Ugly Ducks : being some 
Thoughts on Misplaced Men 

Of the Sudden Sweetening of Certain 
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Concerning the Estimate of Human 
Beings 

Remembrance 

On the Forest Hill : with some 
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Concerning Resignation 

A Reminiscence of the Old Time : be- 
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At the Castle : with some Thoughts 

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some Thoughts on the Wrong Tack 
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On 



THE CRITICAL ESSAYS OF A COUNTRY 
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Archbishop Whately on Bacon 
Recent INIetaphysical Works — Lewes, 

Maurice, Fleming 
Thorndale ; or, the Conflict of 

Opinions 
James Montgomery 



Friends in Council 

Edgar Allan Poe 

George Stephenson and the Railway 

Oulita the Serf 

The Organ Question 

Life at the Water Cure 



London : LONGMANS, GREEN, and CO. Paternoster Row. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: March 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



